


Aimless

by Sarshi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:17:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarshi/pseuds/Sarshi
Summary: Severus Snape survived Nagini's bite in the final battle against Voldemort and he's retreated from the world to work on potions. Hermione decided she wants to become a Potions Mistress, and she's persuaded him to take her on as an apprentice. Meanwhile, her relationship to Ron is going steadily downwards.





	1. The New Apprentice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KD writes (KDHeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/gifts).



> Hi, guys! 
> 
> It's been forever since I wrote fanfic - or since I wrote anything, for that matter. I got the idea for "Aimless" this morning. I have no idea how long it will be, or how often I'll be posting new chapters. I'm doing this for the fun of writing without having to edit much or ponder about plots and things, so this is not beta-ed and will probably never be.
> 
> If I seem to have vanished off the face of the world, drop me a note. If I don't respond at all for weeks, ask KDHeart, she'll know if I'm dead. 
> 
> I'm dedicating this story to her only because I'm a nuisance for writing the above paragraph. And because there's a "gift" button here. I don't think she's into Harry Potter stuff much.

Hermione finished reading the list of terms, conditions and regulations and picked up a quill.

"Sounds good to me," she said. "Especially since it says we can discuss any and all changes amicably, should any issues arise."

She didn't mean to make it sound like a question, but as her hand hovered over the page, Snape nodded again. He had a gray hair or two, now, as well as a scar courtesy of Nagini on his neck, but otherwise he was the very image of the man who'd taught her in school. She supposed it hadn't been so long, objectively, even though the world was very different and so were they.

The most striking change on his side was that he seemed calm. _Perhaps being away from screaming children, a Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore helps,_ she thought with dark amusement. For a second, she felt uneasy, as if she'd caught herself in the middle of a lie, but she pushed the feeling away.  _All's good_.

She signed on the dotted line.

"Welcome to the world of high-level potions, Miss Granger," Snape said. "And now, for the informal rules."

"Informal?" Hermione asked suspiciously. "Shouldn't you have mentioned them earlier on, Professor?"

He shook his head and stood, inviting her out of his small office and into the laboratory just beyond.

"They're hardly likely to be deal-breakers," he explained. "Consider them a part of your education, not... conditions, terms or regulations."

"Alright."

There were shelves everywhere, on which she noticed vials, boxes, bottles and odd containers of potions and ingredients. She noticed knives and bowls and weights similar to those they'd used in Hogwarts, and others she didn't recognize. Nothing seemed dangerous at a first glance - then she saw a door at the back of the room, probably leading to the cupboard where he kept more volatile or precious things.

"Everything you see in this room belongs to me. The paperwork we've just signed says that I will provide you with the ingredients necessary to make the potions I myself direct you to create. It doesn't mean you can pick whatever you like off the shelves."

"Of course you'll either tell me what to take, or I'll ask," Hermioned nodded. "I believe it's only natural." 

"I'm glad that you do," Snape said. "The same is true of all instruments, as well. You know your way around basic potions making. You'll learn more advanced techniques here. However, you will  _never_  know your way around any particular laboratory at first sight - it's a great mistake to assume cauldrons, spoons or ladles are interchangeable, especially for highly delicate work. All true Potions Masters keep their instruments as clean as humanly possible, but one can never entirely remove the trace of some former potions or ingredients completely."

"I understand, Professor."

Snape pulled a stool from under a working table and sat on it, then summoned one for Hermione, too.

"Drop the  _professor_ ," he said. "Firstly, because I am no longer one. Secondly, because the relationship between a master and an apprentice is traditionally fairly close."

"How close?" she asked instantly. There were many things she didn't know about the wizarding world even now, and she would hate it if people automatically assumed that she was sleeping with her master or anything of the sort.

"That depends on the master and apprentice," he replied. He seemed to find guarded expression amusing, because his lips twitched somewhere between a smile and a scoff. "Close enough that you may call me  _Snape_."

"Then I don't see why I should be  _miss_ , either," she offered. "Granger will do. Or Hermione." She regretted the second offer the moment she said it, as it would be odd to hear Snape call her by her given name, but thankfully he didn't take it.

"Granger," he said. "Keep in mind, as well, that an apprentice is not a student. An apprentice is not a child, to be coddled and cared for by a professor who is responsible for their knowledge, physical integrity and moral upbringing." 

Hermione couldn't help but laugh. "Were you really responsible for our moral upbringing in Hogwarts?" 

She hesitated for a second, afraid she'd been too familiar, too quickly.

"Unfortunately," Snape replied dryly, as if quite aware of the joke, too. "As a professor, I would be forced to take action should I find you indulging in immoral behavior on the corridors. Now, it is none of my business unless it interferes with your training."

"So if I come here drunk..."

"I'll be less than pleased."

"But if you hear about me getting drunk in a bar, that's fine," Hermione ventured.

His nose wrinkled in distaste, but he only said, "Naturally."

"That's fair," she said. "Even though I don't drink. Or frequent bars."

"I'm aware. Your character is part of the reason I decided to accept you as my apprentice," Snape said.

"So you do care about my character," Hermione pointed out. "It's just that you pretend it's completely my business, and none of yours."

Snape smirked. He seemed more relaxed that he'd ever been in Hogwarts, or during the interviews after Voldemort died, when he'd threatened reporters with no end of terrible deaths. Hermione was happy she'd run into him on Diagon Alley, exchanged a few words, then taken the spur of the moment decision to ask if he was interested in getting an apprentice. Harry and Ron had thought she was nuts, especially to ask _Snape_ for  _more_ classes with him, and she was still testing the waters now, to see if they'd get along, or if this would be yet another of her paths paved with good intentions.

"Welcome to adulthood, Granger," Snape said. "It's when life gets much more complicated."

"Tell me about it," she said.

"I could. I'd be interested in what's bothering  _you_ , though."

Hermione frowned. "You would? Why?"

"Because you're my apprentice," he said, as if that were an answer.

"So you suddenly take an interest in my personal life?"

"No, Granger. I want to know how you'll arrange your schedule and what's likely to interfere with it."

"Ah. As for that. I was considering spreading the eighteen hours of my compulsory weekly training over Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, six hours each, if that's alright with you. I'm flexible, so if it becomes necessary at any point, we can have two sessions of nine hours each during two days."

"It's acceptable," Snape replied. "I spend most of my weekdays brewing, so if you feel like putting in extra time during Wednesdays and Thursdays, it wouldn't be a problem. Announce me as soon as possible about any unexpected arrivals. Don't keep me waiting during scheduled days."

Hermione nodded. "What about weekends?"

Snape glared. " _Rest_ , Granger. An overworked apprentice is a brewer who makes mistakes."

She couldn't help but smile. "I plan on resting, don't worry. I left Hogwarts, too. I was simply curious as to whether you're radio silent on weekends, or-"

"Radio silent?" Snape interrupted. She explained the meaning of the term. "Ah, no. I can  _communicate_ , unless I'm on a trip, which should be rare enough. I would prefer not to, so if questions can wait until Monday, make them wait."

"Of course. I was asking only in case of an emergency."

"What sort of  _emergency_ do you think is likely to happen, Granger? Do you think you'll be dying to brew something unusual? Or perhaps you'll fall behind on your plans to  _overachieve_? That sort of emergency?"

"I don't have any particular emergency in mind," she replied, trying not to take offence. "I simply like knowing the options, even if I never take advantage of them."

"Try not to take advantage of my patience with petty, small _emergencies_ , then."

Hermione wasn't entirely sure why he was annoyed now, but she could take an educated guess.  _I'm not going to bother you every second of every day_ , she thought.  _For Merlin's sake, is that what you think of me?_

"Oh, I'll be sure not to," she said, her voice artificially sweetened to the point where it annoyed even herself. She would have batted her eyelashes, if she didn't think she'd look like a lunatic doing it. "Especially since there seems to be so little of it."

His eyes widened incredulously. "Granger..."

"I have a life, too, you know," she cut him off. "I don't plan on breathing down your neck all day long, and I want to travel a bit on weekends. I was asking in case I heard of plots against your life and needed to warn you - or if I had to suddenly leave for a month and I found out on Saturday morning. You know. Emergencies. Give me a bit of credit, won't you?" 

She wondered if she was trying to bait him into tearing apart the apprenticeship paper then and there, especially when his eyes flashed in anger. Then something changed and he seemed darkly amused.

"I thought you'd gained all the extra credit possible while you were still in Hogwarts, Granger," he replied. "We haven't even started and you already want a bit _more_ credit?"

She gaped.

"Five points from Gryffindor for not having a proper retort," he said quickly. "You're losing credit fast, Granger."

"To think it was only a few minutes ago that you were welcoming me to adulthood,  _professor_ ," she said.

"Adulthood isn't the same as maturity,  _miss_ Granger," he replied meaningfully.

The conversation paused. _Adulthood isn't the same as maturity_ , she repeated to herself. Was Snape talking about himself? About her? About humanity in general? _Maybe he just thought it sounds good_.  _Maybe that's why he said it like that, so I wouldn't realize it's a very stupid retort._

"Any other unofficial rules?" she asked.

"Yes. While in here, you take responsibility for your actions. And as general life advice, study yourself, Granger. Know yourself, know the mistakes you're likely to make, the things you're likely to overlook. A Potions Master - or Mistress, in your case - must be aware of ingredients, of oneself, of the people around. Our work involves not only following recipes, but inventing new ones and doing research. You need to keep your mind as clear as possible to be able to get anywhere."

"I'll try to remember that."

"Don't worry, Granger. I'll remind you when you blow up my cauldrons," Snape said. "Now, you may go. I'll see you on Monday. Ten o'clock."


	2. All Bottled Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might actually have some sort of an idea where this is headed, which is nice.

Hermione flipped quickly through the color catalog until she found the potion's exact color. She wrote its hex code on the observation file, adding a few notes regarding its viscosity, boiling temperature and relative stability - in other words, it was business as usual, even if she was really tired. She'd expected the research side of her apprenticeship to be more exciting and explosive, but it was slow and tedious and occasionally boring. Partly, this was because the first thing Snape had done was teach her a few shields and wards against accidents.

"Why don't we learn about them in Hogwarts?" she'd asked, rather sensibly.

"It helps students learn that potions are dangerous," Snape had replied. "There are wards in the school against the gravest accidents, and the less grave can easily be undone. Hogwarts teaches you not only to brew, but ingrains you with the instinct to never trust a boiling cauldron, which is worth more than complete safety. One must always recheck new recipes for all possible failures before brewing them - and only when the brewing is successful should you begin tests. Start with animals, if possible. Test it on humans only when you're relatively sure you know what it does, and have on hand everything you can to reverse secondary effects."

"How many people died developing potions such as Polyjuice?" Hermione had asked on that first day.

"Polyjuice specifically? None. Similar potions? Very few, and all deaths were avoidable. It pays to be paranoid."

Back in the present, Hermione muttered  _it pays to be paranoid_  under her breath, trying to imitate Snape's tone. Then she poured the potion into one of the containers spelled to withstand high temperatures and pressures, in case the liquid exploded at any point during the next few hours. She sealed the container, cleaned the cauldron, table and utensils, then sat down on one of the stools in the lab, tired to the bone. She was alone in the room, but Snape was just beyond the door, in his office. 

Sometimes she wondered if he could hear her muttering to herself when she was supposed to be alone.  _Should I be embarrassed?_   she wondered.  _He never said anything, so he either can't hear me, or doesn't care_.

The stool was uncomfortable, but Hermione didn't feel like getting off it any time soon. It had been a long day. Brewing often allowed for short breaks while the potion needed to be left alone, but her current experiment had needed fiddling with over and over, until she felt she could no longer remember what her morning had been like, as it had been buried under an endless stream of work.

"Snape?" she cried, hoping against hope that she wouldn't need to stand soon. 

"Yes?" His voice carried over from the other room.

"That tea you mentioned sounds just about perfect now."

"Then brew it," he said, his voice suggesting he was mentally rolling her eyes at her.

Hermione stood and muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath, then walked into Snape's office, where the man was reading letters. A small electric kettle waited on a side table, along with two mugs and a few boxes of different types of tea. Another one of the unofficial rules of Potions Masters said that no food or beverages would be brought into the laboratory. For safety reasons. If you wanted tea, you brewed it away from where you worked.

"Earl Gray?" she asked. He rarely drank anything else.

"Yes, thank you."

Hermione thought it was a bit ironic that neither she, nor Snape had the necessary patience to brew any tea that  _didn't_  come in a bag. 

When the water boiled, she poured it in the two mugs and placed one in front of him. She sat down again, this time on a proper chair which allowed her to lean back and relax. She wasn't facing him, precisely, but she was close enough to put her mug on his desk if she so desired. It was odd to her how quickly they'd started reading each other from small interactions. If one of them was monosyllabic, the other didn't attempt a conversation beyond what was necessary. If she faced slightly away from him, the way she did now, he understood she wanted nothing in particular from him and left her to her thoughts. Snape was sarcastic, but never biting. She was inquisitive, but never too personal. 

 _No, we don't read each other easily_ , she thought, after thinking about it a bit more. _Just quiet and more attentive than the boys are. He probably has no idea what I'm thinking of now._

While staring in the distance, she mentally dared him to look at her, just to check if he _did_ read her well enough to know she was thinking of him in particular. He kept his eyes on the pile of letters. She dared him some more, just because she was too tired to move any time soon, but she still got no reaction. She was vaguely curious about what he was reading that was so fascinating, but she didn't want to intrude, and he didn't offer, so they just drank their tea in silence.

When she finished her tea, Hermione placed the mug on his desk, then thoughtfully ran a hand through her hair. She groaned.

"What now," Snape deadpanned, as if she hadn't been quiet for the past quarter of an hour, or for two hours before that.

"You wouldn't happen to know a spell to clean hair, would you?" she asked before she could reconsider her question. The moment the words were out, she winced. It wasn't the sort of thing one asked a man known commonly known as a  _greasy git_. However, to her surprise, he took out his wand and twirled it at her.

" _Katharzo_ ," he said. 

Hermione touched her hair and was surprised to feel it soft and clean. Tiredness almost forgotten, she nearly jumped over to the wardrobe where they kept their coats, opening it to look at the mirror on the inside of the door.

"No way," she said. "Clean! Soft.  _T_ _ame_."

"It's like  _magic_ , isn't it," Snape replied.

Hermione turned to him, curious about his hair, but not exactly knowing how to bring up the subject. He looked up at her, noticed her curiosity, was annoyed, but twirled the wand at himself.

" _Katharzo_ ," he repeated.

A ripple went through his hair, making it look even greasier than before.

"So it doesn't work for you?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, it works," Snape replied. "Any and all dirt and fumes are removed. However, you're one of the few people who can use this for cosmetic purposes."

"Why?"

"It renders the hair softer and greasier."

"Mine's overly dry," she said. "So that's why it works so well." She didn't need to add the obvious: Snape's hair was naturally greasy. 

Before leaving for home that day, she got him to teach her the spell.

* * *

Hermione twirled a few hairs around her finger, then took a deep breath and asked the question that had been bothering her for a long time, and which she hadn't yet dared to voice.

"Do you ever fear that we've already reached the peak point in our lives and now we've entered a slow decline? That after Voldemort, we'll never rise to our true potential again?"

The other three at the table were silent for a second, then Ron burst out laughing, almost spitting out a bit of spaghetti while he was at it. Harry cocked his head and gave her a slow, serious look, while Ginny smiled to herself. 

"That's our Hermione," Ron said, when he finally managed to get a hold of himself. "Always trying to overachieve, and now she's afraid there's nothing left to conquer."

"That's not it. It's like... okay, we've been through the war, we did our best, now what? Are we really just going to get jobs and get married and have children? Are we going to allow ourselves to settle down and just wait around for the rest of our lives to go by?"

"We deserve a break," Ginny said. "It's alright to relax and live, really. Stop worrying. You don't always need to exceed expectations."

"That's not it," Hermione replied, frustrated with her inability to explain her own fears and frustrations. "I want more from life. I want something challenging and exciting and fun. I want to feel that we keep on doing great things. I think it's why I want to become a Potions Mistress, because there's something new to discover and do. Otherwise, I might have gone into politics."

"Achieve, achieve, achieve," Ron said, with a smile on his face, but a warning in his tone. "You really  _don't_ know how to relax."

"It's not about  _achieving_ ," she insisted. "I'm fine with not  _achieving_ , necessarily. But I feel like I can learn new things, research oddities..."

"Achieve something, maybe?" Ron asked, poking fun at her. 

"Or go on a bloody vacation!" she snapped, not in the mood to be the butt of the joke. "See other countries - let's go to Japan, maybe! I want to have sushi and visit a Buddhist temple, go for the hot springs and see what magic looks like there!"

She was vaguely aware that her voice was rising over the din in the Leaky Cauldron and that people at other tables were starting to fall silent and eavesdrop. She didn't feel like ending up in the papers again, so she shut up abruptly.

"Japan," Ron said, his amusement faker by the moment. "Really, Hermione. I don't know what's going on through your head."

"What?" she asked. "What's wrong with Japan?"

"Are you serious?" he asked, all pretense of joking dropped.

"Yes, why not? I earn enough from the potions I make with Snape, we can both take some time off eventually, so what's the problem?"

He stared at her, and she stared back. Eventually, it was Ginny who spoke.

"That's a bit far," she said, thoughtfully. "And... I don't know, what's wrong with home?"

Hermiones stared from Ron to Ginny, both of whom seemed unwilling to say anything else. She eventually locked gazes with Harry, who shrugged, clearly confused, too.

"Then Iceland?" Hermione proposed. "I hear it's an interesting country. And it's closer."

"Maybe," Ron replied in the sort of tone one used when they were sure they could delay something until it was no longer an issue. He looked annoyed with the whole conversation. "We could, at some point. Sure." He shoved more spaghetti inside his mouth, his mood definitely less happy than just a few minutes before.

"It's just that I feel like doing something," she said, trying to explain herself and to figure out what the problem was. "Go out, have fun. I'm locked in a potions lab all day long, after all."

"And who's fault is that?" Ron demanded, after swallowing his pasta. "You could have been an Auror. It's exciting, you get out, change the scenery."

"It's too exciting," Hermione replied. "Because it's dangerous and, I don't know, I like research and..."

"Then why are you complaining?" he snapped. "You're the one who wanted this, you know. You wanted to work with  _Snape_ , of all people. I told you, the Ministry would have been a good choice, or, I don't know, you could have gone for something else. Whatever the hell you like."

"I like potions..." she said.

"Then what's the ruddy problem, Hermione? What do you want, except everything all the damned time?" Ron put down his fork. "You always get your way, and you're not satisfied with anything you get. If you don't do research, you want research - I told you it's boring, but you wanted it _anyway_. So you lock yourself up in a lab, just like you wanted _,_ then you complain life isn't exciting enough. You come home tired and complain about it, then you want to do even _more_ stuff, which makes you _more_ tired. You want to achieve everything in the ruddy world, and you won't relax, you won't let things be."

"I'm trying to relax, but I feel like I'm missing something," she said, going straight for the issue. "I feel like there's more to life, that-"

"Well, just live with the disappointment of being an adult, like we all do," Ron snapped. "The world doesn't owe you to make you happy."

Hermione wasn't sure how the conversation had gotten to this point, when all she'd wanted was to have a heart-to-heart. The truth was, she wasn't happy - but at least she was trying to figure out how to get out of her constantly low mood. It was something. She was  _trying_.

"What got you so annoyed with me?" she asked, feeling her own temper flare. "I was only suggesting we do somethingfun."

"You're never happy, Hermione," Ron explained. "We move in together, you're not happy. You get the apprenticeship you want, you're not happy. I leave home in the morning, you're not happy. I come home at night, you're not happy. And you're always trying to do something more, as if that solves anything. You pick up knitting, you learn charms, you start researching history - the whole house is full of your damned projects and nothing works for you. You have it all, but so what? It's not good enough for you."

"It is good enough," she said, trying to calm him down. "It's just that... well... I think I'm a bit depressed," she admitted. She'd wondered about it late at night, while Ron slept next to her, and she'd come to the conclusion that it might be psychological.

"Well, what bloody reason do you  _have_ to be depressed?" he demanded. "The war's over, nobody in _your_ family died, unlike mine-"

"That's  _really_ low, Ron," she growled. "You know I-"

"Let me finish. You're in training, you get paid for your work, you have a home, you have me, you have friends, you have everything you want and you're not happy. It's not about anything in your life, it's about you. You just won't lower your expectations, you want something  _more_ , you want something  _different_. Now you're going on about Japan and Iceland, as if that will change the fact that you simply can't relax and get used to having a normal life, like the rest of us mere mortals. It's been months since you've been alright, and you keep coming up with these ideas - oh, Ron, let's move the furniture around, let's go out, let's do this, let's do that. I just say yes to it all, and it never makes you happy. So just stop it, alright?"

Hermione had tried calming down and being rational about it, but his speech made her so angry she felt her face flush.

"If you've already seen this," she said, "why only mention it now, Ron? I could have used your damned help until now, too."

"I try helping!" he snapped. "But you keep going on and on and on. You want this, that, the other - you can't be bothered to act like a normal person. What's the point of it all? Just calm down."

Hermione wanted to say a thousand things. She wanted to tell him she'd go to Japan alone, then, thankyouverymuch. She wanted to scream that he could have helped her out before. She wanted to tell him about the dirty clothes he never washed, about the dirty dishes that didn't clean themselves, about the massages he never gave her no matter how long she spent hunched over a cauldron. She wanted to shout at him for bottling up his feeling even more than her, until they were arguing in the Leaky Cauldron like  _that_ couple nobody wanted to be or hang around. She wanted to growl at him that she didn't want him touching her again too soon, because he was  _tedious_ in bed and she was too pissed off to bear him this week. She wanted to tell him his table manners were still as disgusting as always.

Instead, she said through gritted teeth, "I've been trying to think of things to make myself happier. What's wrong with that?"

"You're just coming up with excuses to be miserable," he answered. "And you're making me miserable, too."

Hermione stood. She was getting too angry to have this conversation, especially in the Leaky Cauldron - especially in front of Harry and Ginny, who were now as silent and were looking for all the world as if they'd rather be anywhere else.

"Where are you going?" Ron asked.

"To check up on a potion," she spat.

"What, really?! At this hour?!"

"No, not really," she said, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. "I have no idea where I'm going. Don't wait up, Ron."

She left, overhearing Ron complaining to Harry and Ginny that it had been  _Hermione_ who'd wanted to go out, and now she wasn't happy about  _this_ , either. The door to the Leaky Cauldron slammed behind her and she found herself all alone on a street in London, not wanting to head back home, not ready to continue the fight with Ron, not willing to be rational about, not interested in apologizing or sorting things out.

 _So I'm a spoiled child who wants it all_ , she thought to herself.  _And I'm all alone at 6 PM. What do I want_ now _?_

She wanted Ron to come after her, she realized. She wanted  _him_ to apologize, but the door didn't open behind her. 

 _What else do I want_ _?_ she asked herself.  _Music. I want music. I want loud music_.

So she rushed off, heading towards the heart of Muggle London, hoping to find a place where she might buy a walkman.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic takes place too early for mp3 players to be a thing. Trust me, I was alive and self-aware at the end of the 90's. And I had a walkman. I was one of the, er, sorta early adopters of mp3 players - I got my first one in 2004. It held 256 GB of data which was Totally A Thing.
> 
> I'm rambling 'cause I'm undersocialized and grumpy at the moment.


	3. Just a Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says on the cover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The WIP name of Chapter 2 was "Bottled Fame", and the WIP name of Chapter 3 was "Home, Bitter Home". Then it got called "Tyrants In Their Own Domains". They have all been changed because they had nothing to do with the plot. I might reuse them, but in case I forget all about them, I'll leave them here. Because they're cool.

"One cannot help but wonder why you asked to come here on a Wednesday," Snape said as Hermione hanged her coat in the wardrobe. "Do you plan on being away on Friday?"

"Probably not," Hermione answered. "I might be here all week, unless you'd rather I left." She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to stay home, where everything made her feel angry at Ron. She didn't want to be around people. She didn't want to be alone, either. She wanted to work, perhaps, and this was the one place where she could be both by herself and with someone, both busy and free to sit idle, if she wished to. Snape never made her work or berated her for taking time off - indeed, he seemed to approve of her breaks and often took them himself.

"You may stay. Trying to overachieve yet again, then?"

The glare she directed at him could cut through solid rock, but it had little effect on him, except a curious, amused look.

"Was it something I said?"

Hermione thought, not for the first time, that very few of his questions actually sounded like he seeking an answer. Most of the times he deadpanned, as if he found the conversation amusing, or as if he enjoyed riling her up.

"An overachiever, really?" she demanded. "Really? That's what you have to say about me?"

 _And if he finds my tone annoying, he can stuff it,_ she thought.  _Let him get annoyed. Let him demand respect. See if I care_. 

Snape didn't get annoyed, and didn't demand respect. Instead, he drummed his fingers on his desk. "If you think you're anything other than overachieving, you lack introspection in a rather worrying degree."

She felt herself turning red again, and it definitely wasn't from embarrassment. She didn't often get as angry as she had with Ron, but when she did, it took a while for her good mood to return. As it was, she'd spent a long time walking around the previous night with a cheap walkman in her purse and a pair of silly headphones on her head, trudging through the rainy London, listening to Phil Collins and trying really hard to calm down before she went back home to Ron and his annoying self. She'd charmed her clothes to stay as dry as they could without arousing suspicion, so as not to catch a cold, but despite all the walking and avoiding her boyfriend at all costs, going so far as to even sleep on the couch so he wouldn't bother her in bed, her mood was anything but lenient.

"I see," she replied icily, and headed towards the laboratory.

"That's why you're here," Snape said, making her stop in her tracks. "Overachievement."

For a second, Hermione had the weird feeling that he'd read her mind and had instantly known she didn't want to be home because of Ron, because of the way he kept mocking her desire to do things, to get involved in projects, to learn. She felt exposed, caught out, naked. A part of her almost wanted it to be so, just so that  _someone_ could understand. The other part knew that she'd have to kill Snape if he ever saw that deeply into her, because she couldn't stand one more drop of conscious mockery.

"What," she said. It was her turn to deadpan, apparently. He was rubbing off on her.

"That's why you're my apprentice," Snape replied. "And why Draco Malfoy is not. Driven, determined, workaholic, studious, with a degree of introspection and independence. Well. Never mind the introspection, I suppose."

Hermione waited, her eyes locked with his, daring him to continue his thoughts, to stick the knife in her back, to say something to turn the backhanded compliment into a slap. He said nothing else.

"Draco Malfoy wanted to become a Potions Master?" she eventually asked.

"Oh, yes. If you choose a different career path than teaching dunderheads the fine art of potion making for a salary much lower than you really deserve, brewing can bring you a small fortune, a large amount of recognition in certain circles and some degree of professional freedom. Incidentally, a lot of the money one earns is usually reinvested in ingredients, some of which can be rather expensive." He gave her a predatory smile. "That is why you are not allowed to walk into that laboratory before you've calmed down. I don't wish to worry about mistakes which might cost me a small pile of money."

Hermione wanted to protest, but she couldn't well force Snape to allow her access in  _his_ lab, so she leaned against the wall and rubbed her head.

"Should I just leave, then?" she asked.

"That depends. Do you plan on calming down soon?"

She snorted. "Not until Friday, I don't think."

"Then sit down, Granger. I'll brew us some tea."

She did sit. He'd caught her off guard, and now her anger had moved to the background, behind the puzzlement and suspicion she felt at him making tea. He never did it if she was around and able to take care of it. Hermione  _wanted_ to be angry, but he was acting too unlike his usual self for her not to notice.

"You don't even trust me with an electric kettle?" she asked.

"Don't insult yourself. I'm doing this out of courtesy." His tone didn't sound very courteous. But did he mean it? Perhaps.

"Why?" she said.

"Because you are my apprentice and that means I get to suffer through whatever moods you decide to inflict upon me. I will ask you a question. Take your time before you answer it."

Hermione waited for it while he poured water into their mugs, then brought them over to his desk.

"What's the question?" she asked.

"What on Earth is bothering you? Take your time thinking of the answer."

He sat down and reached for a pen and a magazine and started doing what appeared to be a crossword puzzle. She realized that he was wasting time while waiting for her to reply, but doing so in a manner which didn't imply staring at her awkwardly until she managed to come up with something coherent and not too personal.

She took her time, just as he'd suggested. She didn't want to overshare, but here was somebody who was far from her issues and who was willing to provide answers. It was an opportunity, she guessed, such as they were.

"Do wizards travel?" she asked eventually. "Outside the country, I mean."

Snape glanced up at her, then went back to his crossword, and wrote in a word before answering.

"Some do," he said. "Some don't. You'll find purebloods to be vaguely less mobile than Muggles. Rich families, such as the Malfoys, might own manors in other countries, which they're likely to visit often, but it's less common for them to go on holiday as tourists. I suppose it has a lot to do with logistics, especially for those who don't blend in too well in the Muggle world. So while it's travelers for pleasure are somewhat rare, they do exist. Some of them, such as Newt Scamander, have been almost _voracious_ travelers, if you could call them such."

"So if I were to suggest a trip to Japan..."

He looked up at her again. She realized he hadn't written in a new word in his puzzle while responding to her, but he was still holding the pen at the ready.

"I'd think it sounds adventurous," he said. "Possibly unpleasantly so."

"Is there anything wrong with Japan?"

"Not in itself, but the distance is an issue. Cross-continental portkeys are a nightmare. And airplanes are often a wizard's bane. As a Muggleborn, you should be able to take them without too many issues arising, I'd assume."

"That's all?"

"That depends. Why are you asking?" He looked genuinely curious, as if not sure what about a trip to Japan could have led to an angry outburst. Which, in a sense, was Hermione's question as well. 

She expanded on the subject. "Last night, I suggested a vacation to Ron. I hadn't even thought about it before I mentioned it to him - you know, as in,  _let's go to Japan_. It was... I'm not sure I even really meant it. Next thing I knew, he was looking at me as if I'd grown another head. Ginny, too, she was with us." She stopped, uncertain of how to go on. She didn't feel like bringing _Snape_ into her less than happy love life.

"Ah," he said, with the air of one who had solved the issue already. "That's not a _wizarding_ problem."

"Then?"

"It's a Weasley problem," he replied. "How many Weasleys are there, anyway?" He frowned and started counting on his fingers. "Molly, Arthur, William, Charley, Percy, Fred, George, Ronald, Ginevra. I think nine, or have I miscounted?"

"Fred died in the war," Hermione said.

"I know. It's regrettable. However, for the purpose of this conversation, what is important is that he was part of the family for some time. Now, nine Weasleys all lived on the salary of a single Ministry worker, with no convenient rich ancestors to leave them a huge fortune when they died. Thus, they were less than well off. As such, many things became luxuries: new clothes, new books - and most of all,  _trips_. A vacation for one is doable most of the time. A vacation for two is more complicated. A vacation for nine people can be very problematic, especially when some of those nine are children and need to be taken care of. It's simply unfeasible, unless you win a large sum of money and pounce on it with determination."

"That one trip to Egypt they went on before our third year," Hermione said in realization. "Of course."

"He probably thinks the two of you are poor, and _you_ , Granger, are throwing  _his_ money out the window. Trips, books - what _will_ you come up with next?" He said the last with amusement, but she blinked at him, dumbfounded. 

"Have I actually struck a chord?" he asked, returning to his not-really-a-question way of saying things.

It would be  _very_ convenient to believe him, to think that all she had to do was introduce Ron to the miracles of being middle class. But it would probably be wrong -  _achieve, achieve, achieve_ , his voice said inside her head.  _Never happy._

"I don't think that's exactly it," she murmured, more to herself than to Snape.

"It might not be. I'm quite sure you haven't told me all about your little spat."

"Oh, really. You happen to know I'm withholding info."

"I was a  _spy_ ," he said dryly. "It involves having an attention span that's greater than a goldfish's. You took exception to my calling you an  _overachiever._  So how does it all tie in together, I wonder?"

"That's not something I wish to disclose," she replied. "But thank you for your explanations. And the tea. May I use the laboratory now?"

Snape studied her for a few seconds, before nodding. 

"I have a batch of potions that need brewing. You will help me with them."

"Alright."

He stood. "Oh, and Granger?"

"Yes?"

"Conquering Japan would be too much of an overachievement. Even for you."

She let out an involuntary bark of laughter. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

 


	4. The Right Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold! The story continues! I still have no idea how long it will be, as I only have a vague outline for it and I love getting distracted on the way there. Although stuff might actually happen in the next chapter. Maybe.
> 
> Later Edit: The more I think about this chapter, the less sure I am it was a good idea. This is what happens when you insta-post and don't think things through. Oh, well. Moving on.

Hermione did the following: she told Snape (again) that she was skeptical about his "Ronald Weasley is poor and thus his perspective is severely limited" theory. She started going out in the evenings, all alone with her walkman. Sometimes, she went out to pubs to read. She told Ron she needed to find herself so she could relax, and he seemed alright with it. She also wondered whether Ron was right and she  _did_ want too much from life. She tried to figure out how to make things better, then tried to stop figuring out how to make things better, just in case it all magically sorted itself out as soon as she let things go. She invented her first potion, and Snape congratulated her, then told her it had already been invented before, but good job anyway.

All in all, she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to do with herself, which was nothing new.

What she'd wanted to say during that dinner in Leaky which had gone so wrong was that she didn't miss the war and wouldn't have wanted it back for any reason, but she missed who she'd been during it. There was one job they needed to do, and they did it, in the hopes that one day the world would be a better place. It was simple, they invested their all into one fight, because that was the  _right_ thing to do.

But she didn't miss the lack of freedom and options, actually - she'd always thought that once the war was done, she could move on to more positive things, to having fun. Maybe Ron had guessed the issue better than her: she felt life could be a lot more exciting, but it never was, so she was always disappointed.

Was she really _that_ sort of a person?

"What's wrong with me?" she asked, walking down the streets of London.

"Why can't I just live my life?" she muttered in the laboratory, as she stirred a new potion.

"Why am I not happy about it all?" she wondered when Ron was asleep. "I have a nice home, a boyfriend, friends, a paid apprenticeship, books, research, everything I want."

"Am I a little, spoiled brat?" she asked the front door of her parents' house when she went to visit them. She didn't ask her parents themselves, however, because she didn't want to worry them - and because she knew she could do no wrong in their eyes.

"Well, at least I love work," she told Snape one morning as she walked into the laboratory and found him brewing Dreamless Sleep.

"Seeing that you tend to spend ten hours here instead of six and occasionally come in on off days, I never would have guessed," Snape replied.

The questions went on and on, and Hermione finally settled on two that actually needed answering. The first question was, "Where the hell is Solsbury Hill, anyway?" She'd started listening to Peter Gabriel and, about the millionth time she played his first studio album (called, quite creatively, "Peter Gabriel" by Peter Gabriel), she sang along about how she climbed on Solsbury Hill and watched the city lights from there and time stood still and an eagle flew out of the night - which got her to wondering what she was singing about, anyway, and could she actually go to that damned hill and find out what it was all about? The second question in need of answering was, "What am I doing wrong in my sex life?"

She'd have to ask her parents about Solsbury Hill - and if they didn't know the answer, she'd look for an atlas with an index at the end. As for her sex life, however, things would get a bit more embarrassing. Thankfully, she knew whom she could ask about it. Ginny was a fellow woman, and she might be able to offer hints, so Hermione would simply suck it up and ask for advice.

* * *

Hermione called Ginny over one Thursday morning, when her team, the Holyhead Harpies, wasn't practicing. They made small talk for a while before Hermione took a deep breath and decided to get it over with.

"Ginny, we're close, right?" she asked.

"Sure, Hermione," the redhead replied, bewildered.

"Well, I was wondering... I'm sorry, this is going to be really personal, I know. Listen, I'm going to ask you, woman to woman, because books don't always have all the answers, I know that, and I need to talk to someone. I could use some advice when it comes to sex, because I believe that-"

"Ooooh, no," Ginny cut her off with an embarrassed laugh. "We're not having this conversation."

"Sorry?" Hermione said. She'd known Ginny might refuse to get into personal topics, but she hadn't expected to be rejected so quickly.

"Hermione, look," the other woman said, as pleasantly as she could, but with steel in her voice saying she wasn't about to relent any time soon. "We're friends and I'd love to help you with anything else, but not with this. The thing is, you're dating my brother and, as I was telling him, too, I have absolutely no intention to find out about what's going on in your bed. Really."

"You were telling  _him_ , too?!" Hermione asked, shocked.

"Of course. I understand, you have issues, but I can't give you pointers and advice about what to do to make him happier. I'm sorry, sort it out between the two of you."

"But Ginny, I-"

"No."

Hermione didn't insist. Later on, she thought Ginny had seemed colder towards her recently and she wondered what else Ron had told her about their relationship. Another thing which bugged her was that Ron had told his sister that  _he_ was unhappy with their sex life, but he hadn't bothered to tell her. Hermione hadn't known. Ron had always insisted that a man who got to cum was a pleased man, so as long as he did, she had assumed he was pleased. Now she had to wonder if he'd been lying, after all.

* * *

"Harry, I want you to know that this is just as embarrassing for me as it will undoubtedly be for you," Hermione said, setting a coffee in front of him, talking quickly and nervously, feeling like she'd cornered him in her kitchen and was about to take immoral advantage of him. "In the name of all the things we've been through and of our amazingly close friendship, please, _please_ don't refuse this discussion."

Harry stared at her, bewildered.

"Okay, what's wrong?" he asked.

"Everything with my sex life," she said, then held up a hand as he was about to speak. "Everything. I might be frigid. Or not. I'm not sure. I don't know how to tell. I'm miserable, and Ron apparently isn't very happy, either. I'm trying to understand what's going on, but I just don't know where to start."

Harry turned pink, but didn't bolt, which Hermione thought was a step in the right direction.

"Oookay," he said, uncertainly. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about this sort of thing, Mione."

"Well, I tried to bring it up with Ginny, but she ran in the other direction so fast that I can still hear the sonic boom she left behind. Honestly, I can't go to a gossip like Lavender, I can't ask my parents, I can't just drop into a bar and start asking random people. I suppose I can go to Snape and ask him if he knows any potion which can magically improve one's performance in bed, but I can hear him now,  _Oh, Granger, I do admire your curiosity in all scholarly areas and I'm quite sure this interest is purely theoretical and has nothing to do with your personal life._ That would go over so very well."

Harry snorted.

"I see your point. Okay. Err. What can I help you with?"

"Women. How interested in sex are they? Generally speaking."

"I've only ever got that far with Ginny," Harry answered. "So I honestly can't tell you about averages."

Hermione rubbed at her eyes. "Quite right. Okay. I obviously haven't thought this through. Err. Is she always interested in sex? Does she have moments when she's just waiting for it to be over? Do you know?"

"I think she hides those," Harry replied. "If she has them. But, err. It's natural to be less interested sometimes, I think. When you're tired, or not at your best. It happens to me. It probably happens to Ginny, too. How often does it happen to you?"

Hermione breathed out, briefly wishing she hadn't started the conversation, slightly relieved that she finally had someone to talk to.

"Always," she said curtly, feeling herself cringe even saying the word.

"Oh, wow!" Harry thought about it for a second, leaning back in his chair, then turned his eyes back on her, processed what she'd just said, then repeated, "Always? Wow. That's..."

"Yeah."

"Well, I can see why you'd want to talk to someone," he said. "Okay. Well. I'm in over my head. But, well, let's not jump to conclusions. Have you ever, well,  _not_ felt this way? I'll, err, try to stop saying _well_ now. Right. Okay."

Hermione thought back, then went further back, then went back a bit more.

"I think maybe I used to feel differently?" she suggested. "I'm not sure. I mean, sex was never great... But I used to want it. I'd think about it and picture it, and it would feel like it would be a nice thing. And then it never lived up to my expectations." As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she gave a bark of bitter laughter. "Nothing ever does, does it? Maybe Ron was right. I'm the issue. I'm the one who can never be pleased"

Harry looked sympathetic, and he didn't blame her, so Hermione tried to relax.

"This is going to be a very personal question," Harry said. "Sorry about asking it."

"No, go ahead."

"Do you, er, what's the word? Oh, for Merlin's sake, I have no idea how to ask this politely - do you masturbate?"

"Sometimes," Hermione replied. "Rarely. I used to do it much more often. I just don't feel like it anymore."

"But it felt good for you?"

"Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it."

There was an awkward pause during which neither knew what else to say or ask. Eventually, Harry seemed to decide it was his job to offer some sort of input.

"Maybe you're not frigid," he suggested. "Maybe you just... you know, like, when you have a stomach flu or something and you're supposed to diet, but you don't, so you're always half sick and food makes you nauseous, but you try to eat normally anyway and it just never ends, all food is messing with your system?"

Hermione blinked. "Come again?" She resisted the urge to add " _pardon the pun_ " when she thought better about her phrasing. Luckily, Harry didn't notice it, busy as he was with trying to rephrase his point to something comprehensible.

"What if the issue isn't that you're frigid," he said slowly, "but that you're sick of sex? Maybe it didn't work out for some time - maybe you were tired or not in the mood, but you kept on doing it, until you stopped enjoying it? But you don't try to take a break from it because you live with Ron? So you're always sick of sex, but you keep having it anyway, until you're stuck in a loop. You don't... go celibate for awhile, so you get the chance to start wanting it _again_ , so it feels like you _can't_ like it, ever. Does this make any sort of sense? I'm sorry about the food rant earlier - I got the idea because I ate something bad a couple of weeks ago and all food made me feel sick, even things I'd normally like. I mean, that's an appetite, this is an appetite, maybe they work in somehow related ways?"

"So what you're saying is that I'm disinterested because I'm stuck in a vicious circle," Hermione said. "I don't like sex because I don't want it - and I don't want it because I don't like it. How is this different from being frigid?"

"Maybe if you don't have it for a while, you'll start wanting it again. And if you have a good experience, you might start enjoying it." 

"Is that really possible?" she wondered.

"I don't know," Harry replied, honestly. "I really don't have a ton of experience with this sort of stuff. It's a very wild guess."

Hermione considered it for a few moments, letting her mind drift back to the times before she'd started having sex at all. She hadn't sought out those writings, necessarily, but she'd avidly read sex-related texts anyway. Her imagination had used to drift when she'd considered handsome historical characters, or when she watched her mother's shows and saw a particularly interesting smile, or fell a bit in love with a clever man in a film. Lavender telling an entirely made-up story about Snape tying up girls in the dungeons had gotten her mind to recreate the scene in full color and sound, with herself as the protagonist - she remembered the delicious feeling of picturing all sorts of things as she went to bed, then realized she hadn't thought of Snape that way even once while she worked in his laboratory. Even now, she felt something about the scene, but as an echo of her old pleasure in it rather than anything else.

"You might be on to something," she said. "Thank you, Harry. You have no idea how much it helps to talk to someone."

"What are friends for?" he asked, smiling at her and breathing out in relief that he didn't need to come up with a different theory or to have Hermione throw words at him at a thousand miles per hour.

"Don't tell Ginny and Ron about this, please," Hermione said.

"You have my word," Harry replied. "Good luck with figuring it all out."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Hermione goes to Solsbury Hill to answer her other Really Important Question. Unless I change my mind, because I've seen some pictures and the most exciting thing about it is the Peter Gabriel song.


	5. Out of the Machinery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, when I came up with the idea for this story, I was listening to "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins, so I figured Hermione could mention the song somewhere. Then I looked it up and saw that it was released in 2007 - shock and horror! It wasn't a decently old song Snape might have grown up hearing - instead, it was too recent for JK Rowling's timeline. Thus, Hermione acquired an all-around love for Phil Collins, Genesis and Peter Gabriel, because I was frustrated with not being able to use "In the Air Tonight".
> 
> I re-checked. It was launched in 1981 and re-launched in 2007. And the joke's on me: I no longer remember where I wanted to use it initially.
> 
> Oh, the title of the chapter is pulled out of "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel. I love how the lyrics sound good when you sing along, but the moment you actually look at them written down they're kinda crazy.
> 
> E.g.,  
> "When illusion spin her net  
> I'm never where I want to be  
> And liberty she pirouette  
> When I think that I am free  
> Watched by empty silhouettes  
> Close their eyes but still can see  
> No one taught them etiquette"
> 
> Like, what the hell? I'm not even sure what's up with the grammar - "And liberty she pirouette"? And was stuff like "etiquette" there just to rhyme?
> 
> Oh, well.

The music spoke to Hermione. She wasn't entirely sure what it said, but some of the lyrics were exactly what she needed them to be.  _So I went from day to day, though my life was in a rut_ , Peter Gabriel sang.  _You can tell from the lines on her face, you can see that she's been there, probably been moved on from every place, 'cause she didn't fit in there,_ Phil Collins said. Hermione felt it all. She felt it  _so much_. Her life was in a rut. She'd been through shit, she didn't belong anywhere. It spoke to her.

"Everybody who ever was in Genesis is brilliant," she declared to herself.

Snape was away for the evening for some prior engagement, and Hermione had taken over his office. Initially, that had meant she'd sat down at his desk to write down ideas to stabilize a certain potion without altering its effect. Then she'd made herself tea. Then she'd remembered she'd bought some cookies on the way to work and she might as well eat them. Then she'd used  _Sonorus_ on her walkman to be able to play music without putting her headphones on. In short, one thing had led to another and now she was having a party of one and she was dancing around the office to "That's All", which incidentally _didn't_ have any lyrics she related to.

For the first time in a long time, Hermione was happy. She had her music and, at the moment, she didn't have anything else. No Ron, no anxieties, no worries about anything. She was alone and free.

That was why she nearly had a heart attack when she pirouetted and came face to face with Snape who had apparently just walked in through the front door. She cried out in shock and panic, lunged for her wand, shouted  _Quietus_ at the walkman, and plunged everything into silence, while she stood there like a deer in the headlights.

Snape laughed. It was the first time she'd heard him actually laugh, as if he'd come across the best joke in the world. Hermione turned scarlet red and wished she could vanish off the face of the Earth. She wished she still had her Time Turner so she could create a world-destroying paradox which would at least have prevented the situation. She hadn't expected Snape to return so early in the evening - especially after he'd told her not to wait for him. She didn't know whether she was  _allowed_ to dance around like crazy in his office; he'd never said she  _wasn't_ , but it was probably against some sort of unofficial rule.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry about the music. I'm sorry about the dancing. I'm sorry-"

"You're sorry for breathing, as far as I can tell," Snape said, more amused than he should have been. "Rest assured, Granger - your apologies are unnecessary. I seem to recall having told you that the laboratory and office are yours to use, as well. I'm happy to see you move and stretch, not just hunch over a cauldron like a hag."

He had indeed mentioned that she was allowed to come and go as she pleased; not too long before this evening, he'd gotten tired of her asking if she could come in early, leave late, check up on a potion, pick up her notes, leave a spare sweater, bring her own tea and about a hundred other things. His exact words had been, if she recalled correctly, " _I trust you not to ruin my life's work, so just do as you please and stop pestering me._ "

Hermione sat in her chair, feeling embarrassed and guilty.

"Is Ronald away from home?" Snape asked.

"No, why?" she answered. "He probably finished work by now, so he ought to be there."

Snape looked at the clock on the wall and hummed.

"You came in at about nine in the morning. Plus six hours... Your schedule said you could leave at three. It is now seven."

"I'm sorry to have stayed so long," she said.

"Stay all you want," Snape said, waving his hand dismissively. "I just find it curious that a young woman would rather spend four extra hours at work when a young man is waiting for her at home. Not that it's any of my business."

"It isn't," she confirmed, then rethought it, realizing what it must look like. "We aren't fighting. Not really. We had a sort of disagreement a few weeks ago, but that's all. It's just... I need space to think about things. Ron's a good man, but I feel guilty next to him. All he wants is for us to be happy, and I can't manage it. I try, but I can't. I don't want you to think I'm here because of sordid business - I just need a bit of space."

"Hm," Snape said. Hermione waited for him to offer some advice, or make a snide remark, or deadpan, or whatever. He didn't.

"Are you sure it's fine for me to be here?" she asked.

"As far as I'm concerned, yes," he replied. "I have to wonder what Mr. Weasley is thinking, however."

"I've taken to walking around and listening to music. He knows that."

Snape's eyes locked with her own and she realized how sad it sounded. Her boyfriend was patiently waiting for her at home, and here she was, waiting. Dancing. Being away day after day, while he might worry about her or their future.

"I think I'll go now," she said.

"Alright. Have a nice evening, Hermione."

She was startled. "You called me Hermione."

"You gave me permission to on the day we signed the contract," Snape replied. "It seemed like a good context to use your given name. Unless you've changed your mind about that permission."

"No, I haven't," she said.

"Well, I suppose we're on unequal footing now," he mused. "I think that, when the time comes and I pour my heart out in front of you, you may call me Severus, too."

He gave her a look which said that there were very few chances that anything of the sort would happen any time soon. She smiled at him, then got up to leave.

* * *

Hermione decided that she had to make things work. Snape was right: it wasn't natural for her to be at work or out on the streets all the time while Ron was waiting for her at home. So she went home earlier, cooked more interesting foods, listened to his stories and generally tried to look cheery, in the hope that fake happiness would bring actual happiness.

Ron, at least, seemed more content than before. It was a good change.

She decided to take the matter of sex into her own hands, as well, and she brewed an aphrodisiac in Snape's laboratory, hoping he wouldn't notice what she was working on. Of course, her hope was short-lived.

"Is this for a man or a woman?" he asked.

"The recipe didn't mention there'd be a difference," Hermione said, picking up the book to double-check.

"It wouldn't. The standard version you have there works on both sexes, and increases the individual's appetite" Snape replied. "However, you might want to use rose petals for women, for an bit of extra sensory perception - or sandalwood for men, for more self-control. I believe I don't have to explain why these changes are more helpful for one sex or the other."

"I see," Hermione replied. "Right. Rose petals."

"I wasn't aware there was a demand for aphrodisiacs currently," Snape added conversationally. "Who are you brewing it for?"

Hermione tried not to blush and failed spectacularly. She his her face behind her hair, only managing to draw even more attention to her own embarrassment. Snape stared at her, then laughed. It was the second time he was laughing at her expense, but she didn't mind much. It wasn't a sardonic laughter, and it didn't feel mocking, either. It sounded surprised and pleasant, as if amused and fascinated at the same time. 

She wished Ron would laugh like that at her, but he would probably think it was offensive, so he usually tried to keep a straight face when she embarrassed herself.

"I can't very well sell something I don't test!" she huffed at Snape.

"But nobody asked you to sell it," he pointed out.

"Even so!" she replied curtly. "When do I add those petals?"

He told her when, and explained the subtleties of how the ingredients combined and why - all the while keeping his professional composure. It was only later, when she headed home, that he wished her a  _very good evening indeed_ , with a lot of amusement.

She was surprised by how little she actually minded Snape knowing about her personal life. She was also quitepleasantly surprised by how well the aphrodisiac worked. For once, she felt like she understood what all the fuss was about. Things were _definitely_ better. Maybe the nagging feeling that it was all a dead end would go away soon.

* * *

"Where is Solsbury Hill, anyway?" Hermione asked while putting vials of potions in boxes to be sent to various shops around Britain and listening to Peter Gabriel again.

"Somerset," Snape answered. "Near Bath."

"Oh, you've been there?"

"Yes. It's a hill."

"Is it interesting?"

"That depends. Are you _very_ passionate about hills?"

"I am about this one, because it's in one of my favorite songs," Hermione said.

"This is a hill only a mother could love. And your Peter Gabriel, apparently."

"Then I don't think I can take Ron there, since he wouldn't appreciate making an effort to visit a dull place. Oh, well. I can grab a bus to Bath... not today, it's getting late. Not tomorrow, since we'll spend the weekend at the Burrow. Let's see. Wednesday."

Snape cocked his head. "You really want to take the bus to try to get to Solsbury?"

"I don't know the place, so I can't Apparate," Hermione replied with a shrug.

"You'll waste a whole day to get to a hill that I've just told you is far from interesting?"

"I want to see it, so I'll go see it," she answered defiantly. "Is there a problem?"

Snape went to the wardrobe and brought out both their coats.

"Erm," she said.

"Side-along Apparition, Granger. I can take you to Solsbury Hill, if you really want to see it."

"But isn't it boring?"

"Yes. That's why you shouldn't waste a whole day getting there. Get dressed."

She beamed at him as if Christmas had come early. She put on her coat, and he took her by the shoulders. For a second, she thought that it was the first time he'd touched her on purpose ever since she'd become his apprentice, but only for a second, because then they reappeared on a small road with tall greenery on both sides.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" Hermione asked, looking around. "This doesn't look like a hill."

"This is Solsbury Lane," Snape explained. "We have to walk to get to the hill itself. Don't worry. It isn't a difficult hike - the place is actually called _Little_ Solsbury Hill, and for a very good reason."

It wasn't a long walk. Solsbury Lane was mostly deserted, and when it reached a slope, it turned to the right, avoiding the climb. Hermione and Snape kept going forward, jumping over a fence, then disillusioning themselves just in case they weren't supposed to be there. It was a small adventure and, when they reached the summit, they could look down at the village below, stretching towards the horizon and the city of Bath.

"It's nice here," Hermione said.

"You should see Scotland," Snape replied. "If you really want to go sightseeing."

"Maybe I will."

 _It's all good_ , Hermione told herself. And she continued telling herself that until she got home and told Ron about her trip, thus bursting the little bubble of happiness she'd been building for the past few days.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been anywhere near Solsbury Hill, but I have wondered what the fuss is all about. Luckily, I have Google Maps and a ton of photos to help me figure out what it looks like, sort of. Apparently there used to be some sort of Iron Age fort there, but I have no idea how visible any remains are, if at all - thus, Hermione conveniently never notices anything of the sort.


	6. Another Day in Paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep wanting to insert plot, but Hermione won't have it.
> 
> That is my excuse.

It was a weekend at the Burrow, with a few people gathered around for Molly's delicious lunch. Harry was happy just to be there, Ginny was talking to her mother about something related to taking care of the house, Arthur was telling Ron about his newest adaptation of some sort of Muggle device, and Hermione was chatting to George.

"Of course I can try to adapt it," Hermione told him. "But it might take a while. About a month or so, I suppose. I still have orders for some shops to fill, and an experiment of my own to do."

"There's no rush," he told her. "I haven't told anyone else about our Lovestruck Lollipops yet. Mostly because I can't get the love potion to wear off after a mere two minutes. It's all fun and games, until you have a maddened canary try to win your affection for a week."

"You tested the potion on a canary?"

"With the worst results. Say, you don't have your own lab yet, right?"

"No, I use Snape's. Setting one up costs a ton of money and I can't afford it right now. I'll get there eventually, however. I mostly make money out of selling fairly simple potions - he deducts the costs, since I'm using his ingredients, then takes 25% for himself and leaves me the rest. Also, from what's left, he deducts for the ingredients I wasted with bad batches or experiments. It leaves me a nice sum, though."

"I'd ask you if you could brew some of the potions that go into my usual products, too, if you weren't working for  _Snape_ ," George said. "But he wouldn't approve, would he?"

"You'd be surprised," Hermione said. "I don't think he  _minds_  pranks, now that he doesn't have to be around the people making them."

"Really? I kept wondering how you can bear working with him, even if it's just three days a week." 

Hermione smiled.

"Actually, it's surprisingly nice. He's very different from what he was like in school. Less of a temper, not hovering a lot, the insults are milder and he sounds like he means them as a joke, mostly. It's unexpected, but I'm actually having fun at work."

"Fun?" George said. "Working anywhere but at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes is  _fun_? Never mind being around Snape, Hermione, all I ever hear from most people is how much they dislike their jobs."

She laughed. "I wasn't expecting to love it, either. It's peaceful and quiet. Brewing potions is challenging at times, and simple and routine during other moments. I guess it would be a problem if I spent all my day brewing, because it would get repetitive, and I'd start feeling stir-crazy, but as it is, with three days there and the rest of the week off, it's perfect. I like how I can work uninterrupted, you know? Besides, Snape's half-pleasant company and that really counts for a lot. Recently, during breaks, or when we do something that doesn't require a lot of concentration, I've started playing music. He caught me dancing around the office once when he was supposed to be away and he told me, not in so many words, that it's good for me to work out between brewing sessions, so I don't end up a hag with a hunchback."

"No way," George said. "Dancing around Snape's office? And he approves?!"

"I know, right?" Hermione said, warming up to the topic. "As I was saying, he's pleasant company. You know, I went on a binge, listening to Peter Gabriel - that's a musician, he has this song, called Solsbury Hill. So I listened to it over and over and over and yesterday I asked,  _where's Solsbury Hill anyway?_  So it turns out Snape knew the place. He told me it was the most boring hill on earth - though not in so many words, obviously. So I said something like,  _well, then I'll head over there next week, grab a bus to Bath.._. Next thing I know, he's handing me my coat and offering to Side-Along Apparate me there, so Idon't waste a whole day for no reason. Can you believe it? I was stunned."

"Wait, and you went?" George asked, stunned.

"Of course I went. There was nothing special about Solsbury Hill, just like he said. But going there was surprisingly fun, considering."

"You went out on a trip with  _Snape_?!" Ron said.

It was then that Hermione realized the room had gone quiet while she was explaining all about her work, and that all eyes had turned to her.

"More like a short stroll," she replied before she had the time to really register the fact that Ron looked outraged, not surprised. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"You went sightseeing with Snape!"

"He's not a Death Eater anymore, Ron. Are we really having the  _Snape is evil_  conversation again? What is this, the thousandth time?"

"No," he replied. "It's not that he's  _evil_. You're going out with Snape, Hermione! Merlin, you're dancing around with him - you're staying at work late to what? To party? And then you go off for a walk Merlin knows where for hours while I wait for you and I try, I swear, I try, but-"

"I'm not dancing around with Snape," Hermione said. "I'm not  _partying_. He caught me dancing in his office that one time. What, should I accuse that you had late night dinners with Snape every time he caught you on the way to the Hogwarts kitchen at midnight?!"

"That's not the point!" Ron cried. "Hermione, the point is - look, you didn't tell me about going to some hill-"

"It happened yesterday, it just didn't come up!"

"...Or wanting to go to some damned hill!"

"You were complaining about me wanting too many things," Hermione said. "So I figured I could do some on my own."

"What the hell? Are we still in this together? Or is it just you, on your own?"

As it often happens when a couple is fighting, everyone else was pretending nothing was going on, waiting silently for them to finish. Nobody wanted to interfere. Hermione realized she hated this - the attention, fighting in front of people again, showing everyone the dirty underbelly of their relationship. Even if Ron was right, and a part of her had to admit that he was, it wasn't very nice of him to make everyone else a witness to their problems.

"Of course we are," she snapped. "Don't be silly."

"Well, it doesn't seem like it."

"Ron..." Hermione sighed. "I know I wasn't the world's best girlfriend recently. For the past two weeks, I've been trying to fix that. Please don't pick on me now, not when I want to make it up to you. Work is work. I relaxed a bit with Snape. Do you know why? Because it's simple. He doesn't want me to be happy, he doesn't really care what I do. He wants me to make those potions and learn things. And that's simple."

"Is that what you want from me?" Ron asked,his voice quivering. "To stop giving a damn? Give you all the space in the world."

"No, of course not!" Hermione said.

"It makes me wonder what  _else_  you do at work and forget to mention."

"I brew potions," she snapped. "What, do you think I bake cookies and secretly gossip about celebrities?"

"I just wonder what else you do with a man you have so much  _fun_  with," Ron said through gritted teeth. "And why he's willing to take you out on  _dates_  all of a sudden."

"The only reason I'm having  _fun_  at work is that none of it matters there. As long as I don't blow up a potion, I don't have much to worry about. Worst case scenario, I mess things up really badly and he gets pissed off and kicks me out forever - I lose my apprenticeship with him and I have to figure out a different career path. Big deal." The next words came to her naturally, her lips formed them. It was as if she heard herself speaking. "But there's only one you, Ronald Weasley. If I mess things up with you, you're not replaceable. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I'm scared, that I worry about what I do with you because you  _really_  matter. I love you, and love is hard. There's challenges to go through and sometimes it gets hard to breathe because I don't know how to make things well and I'm afraid I'll mess it all up."

Ron's face softened. His gaze locked with Hermione's, who felt as if she'd swallowed a boulder.

 _It's true, isn't it?_  she wondered.  _I wouldn't say these things if I didn't mean them, would I? But if I mean it all, why do I feel like I'm lying? Why do I still feel like running away from it all?_

"It can get difficult," Ron admitted.

"You'll sort it out, darlings," Molly said. "It only gets better and everyone has their ups and downs."

Ron took Hermione in his arms and kissed her. She leaned into his embrace and closed her eyes. It would all be fine. She'd make things work.

* * *

Despite Hermione's assurances of love and her attempts to make their home warmer and happier, Ron was more anxious than usual, especially when she mentioned Snape. In order to reassure him that she'd meant every word of her "Snape doesn't matter" speech, she spent less time at work and more time at home. She researched history, along with the relationship between wizards and other sentient beings, and she tried involving Ron in her discoveries, so he'd feel he was there with her, a part of her life. Not that he could muster much interest about the 1774 centaur-human pact or other similar topics, so Hermione eventually started telling him only the basics.

She wanted it to work, she wanted their lives to be good and normal, and it half-worked, even if sometimes she couldn't sleep at night and she felt like she was in a small box, with no way to ever get out. At other times, when she woke up in the morning, she felt as if she were drowning in cotton, trying to do so much and all of it being pointless. But in the rest of the time, she was almost well, especially when she worked. Sometimes things were good with Ron, too. Her aphrodisiac potions, now brewed when Snape was away, helped a bit.

As Christmas was approaching, Hermione was struck by an idea: she wanted to host a gathering and, for once, let Molly Weasley rest instead of cooking for too many people. 

She went through a few books of recipes, then let everyone know about their plans.

"But Hermione, dear, that's a lot of cooking you have to do," Molly said, worried.

"I work with potions, spending hours adding ingredients is nothing new," Hermione replied, smiling her most cheerful smile.

The fact that she was the one hosting the party meant that they were free to ask other people to join them, as well. All the Weasleys would be coming, of course - Bill and Fleur, Charlie, George and Angelina, Ginny and Harry, Percy and his new girlfriend Audrey. Luna and Neville also accepted their invitations, but nobody else did; it wasn't surprising. Christmas was usually a family thing, and most people chose to spend it with their closest, unless, like Luna and Neville, they already spent all their time with their closest.

"I'd like to invite Snape, too," Hermione said on the afternoon they were making the guest list.

"Snape?" Ron asked, his face falling the way it usually did when the man was mentioned.

"I work with him. I get along with him."

"That, I know you do," he muttered. 

"Please, Ron? I know he isn't close to anyone, so he'll probably be alone for Christmas, and that's not very nice."

"He's all alone for a good reason, probably."

"Yes - a lot of people still hate him for his part in the war. But  _we_  don't, do we? We can invite him?"

Hermione thought it ought to be fine. She'd done her best to improve things, she'd tried to show him she loved him and wanted him and cared for him. If they had issues, fine, they did - but Severus Snape wasn't one of them.

Ron eventually consented, although it was clear his heart wasn't in it. Hermione didn't mind. She'd show Ron that there was nothing to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this story was supposed to be about 7-8000 words long. It would have a snarky Snape (check), a Hermione who was displeased with her life (check) and a Ron who was desperate with the whole situation (triple-check).
> 
> It was also supposed to have Hermione stop trying to make things work. She had a watch that was sort of like the Weasley clock, and one of the hands would have been added as a joke, "In bed with the girl of his dreams". At one point, while waiting for Ron at home, she'd notice that his hand would point to "In bed with the girl of his dreams". And she'd go back to Snape's, drink his whiskey and, when he showed up, she'd tell him that she realized her relationship was over the moment she knew Ron was cheating on her, but she felt nothing. And she'd hit on Snape, who'd refuse her until she actually dumped Ron - which she would that very evening, before returning to Snape.
> 
> Well.
> 
> Now you know exactly what _won't_ happen in this story, because none of that fits anywhere anymore.


	7. I'll Meet You At Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was looking around for songs Hermione might know (considering her passion for music that's been around since her parent's days). I guess I could just call my dad and ask him what he was listening to in high school, since he remembers the exact dates for songs and albums, but I really don't want to explain why I'm interested in all that.
> 
> Anyway, I came across Supertramp and was about to call this chapter "The Logical Song", but it was a bit too whiny for my tastes this morning (I like the song generally, just not this instant). And then I remembered, hey, Smokie! "I'll Meet You At Midnight" is quite neat and the theme of meeting someone at midnight fits with a party.

Cooking was way easier than brewing potions. For one, if you diced an ingredient instead of chopping it, you didn't end up accidentally poisoning your guests. And while Hermione wasn't sure she'd want to cook on a daily basis, she went all out for the party. She made stuffed pancakes with mushrooms and cheese, and tiny salmon puff pastries. Charlie'd given her a recipe for smoked ham soup, which required quite a lot of boiling - but it was fine by her. She made seafood chowder. There was roast duck, and beef Wellington, and stuffed chicken, and a relatively light dish with baked potatoes and eggs and cheese that she couldn't recall the name of, because she'd forgotten to write it down when she'd grabbed it out of one of her mother's books months before. Salads of all sorts. A chocolate yule log, and a Christmas pudding, of course, and a floating island, the recipe for which she'd picked up from the French - she remembered liking the dessert when she'd been to France with her parents years before.

She found a recipe for eggnog and made it, then went on a liquor-making binge and made sour cherry liquor, and then discovered an unusual recipe for sour cherry  _leaf_  liquor, and she made that, too. 

"You  _have_  to come," Hermione told Snape cheerfully. "I can't go in a new direction of brewing without your supervision."

"You  _need_  to come," Hermione told her parents. "I think I've made too many dishes and we can't possibly eat them all and I need to show off to you."

"I couldn't do it all the time," Hermione told Molly, "but every once in a while, this is  _fun_."

Ron was thrilled. It was no secret that he loved food, and between Hermione's genuine excitement for cooking and loads of dishes which looked amazing, he seemed happier than he had in months. She, for her part, was thrilled to remember that there were stasis charms which would keep the dishes perfectly untouched until the party, so she could make anything she wanted without fear of it going bad. Being a witch was wonderful - so many tiny perks.

 _I'm doing everything right_ , Hermione told herself.

When Christmas came, the house looked as if it were out of a fairy tale. Although they'd called people over at around five in the afternoon, Harry and Ginny came early to see if there was anything that needed doing - when there wasn't, they sampled Hermione's liquors and tried not to overdo it. Arthur and Molly came next. Hermione's parents followed soon after that and were quickly assaulted by Arthur's questions about their lives.

Snape showed up three minutes after the clock beat five, probably attempting to be fashionably late. It was Hermione who went to answer the door and she was surprised to find that he had a bowl with him, which he handed to her.

"What's this?" she asked. 

"Chocolate mousse," he replied. "It is customary to bring the host something, is it not?"

"It really wasn't necessary," Hermione said. "I don't think anybody else is bringing anything. We've mostly sent our Christmas gifts by owl, too, nobody's giving them here..." She stopped rambling for a second and smiled warmly. "But then again, who am I to refuse chocolate mousse made by a certified Potions Master?"

She led him from the front door to the kitchen, where the family members who'd already arrived had gathered. The kitchen was fairly large and, as kitchens do, it had attracted everybody there like a magnet made of warmth and cheeriness. It was no surprise, then, that Snape's appearance had the effect of an intrusion. Ron couldn't hide his dislike, Ginny's lips tightened imperceptibly, Harry kept a poker face that might as well have been openly saying that he was trying not to be impolite, Arthur stopped talking to Hermione's parents and Molly sighed. The atmosphere didn't turn arctic, precisely, but it was clear nobody was comfortable.

"Mum, dad," Hermione said smoothly. "This is Severus Snape, my former professor."

Mary Granger beamed and extended a hand to Snape, which he shook automatically, clearly surprised by the warm reception.

"I'm Mary, pleased to meet you," she said, smiling warmly and extending a hand to Snape, which he shook automatically, clearly bemused. "I've heard so much about you. Thank you for accepting our daughter as your apprentice."

Snape's eyes darted to Hermione, who was putting the chocolate mousse down on the dessert shelf. She remembered all of a sudden that she'd never mentioned her parents to him, so he was at a disadvantage. She felt the tips of her ears burning with embarrassment, but luckily her hair hid them well enough.

"It's my pleasure to have her work for me," Snape said smoothly, then shook hands with Hermione's dad.

"Jason," he recommended himself.

"Severus Snape," Snape said. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Granger."

Jason Granger was wise enough not to insist on a first-name basis with a wizard whom even Hermione described as powerful, dangerous, and somewhat antisocial. Snape, meanwhile, looked around the room, took in everybody else's discomfort at having him there and nodded curtly at them all. Mary looked around and, with a grace Hermione knew she herself lacked, decided to take control of the situation and engage Snape herself.

"Hermione tells us potions are so very complex," Mary said. "And she must be right, because I could never follow even her basic explanations. It's a bit daunting, not being able to understand what your daughter's calling is all about."

Snape considered her for a few seconds, before replying. Hermione held her breath. She wished that she wouldn't worry about Snape insulting her parents. She worried anyway.

"I suppose it must be quite difficult indeed for Muggles to grasp the basic notions of potions-making, since you don't have the benefit of years of training," he said in a tone so neutral that Hermione couldn't help but remain frozen. "However," he went on, "to my great dismay, there are an incredibly large number of wizards who seem incapable of grasping those very same notions,  _despite_  their years of training. As far as they are concerned, ingredients go into the cauldron, potions come out, and the rest is a mystery. Many of them can follow recipes, for the better or worse, but they no more know why they add sandalwood for concentration than they know why dough becomes bread, once baked. For the Master or Mistress, however, it is possible to bottle fame and brew glory."

There was a moment of silence, during which Hermione sighed in relief. Snape was his usual less than pleasant self, but at least the unpleasantness was directed towards everybody in the room who already didn't like him.

"Or even put a stopper in death," Harry muttered.

"What was that, Potter?" Snape asked, turning around and switching to his most sarcastic self. He might have loved Lily, but it was quite clear that he still loathed her child. "Do share your input, I'd so  _enjoy_ knowing your opinion, considering your vast knowledge of the subject."

"Bottle fame, brew glory, or even put a stopper in death," Harry repeated more loudly.

Snape froze and the glare he'd directed at Harry vanished without a trace, replaced by bemusement.

"My yearly speech for the first years," he said. "Don't tell me you were actually  _paying attention_ , Potter."

"I wrote it all down at the time," Harry admitted.

"Will wonders never cease," Snape deadpanned. "Weasley, don't tell me you were secretly paying attention in class, too."

"No, sir," Ron and Ginny replied nearly at the same time.

Hermione stifled a giggle.

"You can't go around calling people  _Weasley_ , Snape," she said. "Not when every single wizard who is a Weasley is coming over for dinner."

"Oh,  _joy_ ," Snape said, just as somebody rang the doorbell.

* * *

It didn't take long for all the other guests to arrive. Neville arrived last and paled when he saw Snape sitting at the table, but regained some color when he realized the man was talking to Hermione's parents and ignoring everybody whose name wasn't Granger, even if Ron kept throwing him dirty glances. At one point during dinner, George seemed to take it as a challenge to engage him in conversation, so he brought up love potions and asked Snape if he had any suggestions for modification.

"Granger's taken on your project," Snape said. "That is why you should ask her, Weasley. While I am indeed a Potions Master, I do not have all the answers in the world. I would have to research and run experiments to obtain the variation you want, as well. I can't pull the answer out of a hat."

"But if you worked on it, you'd be faster than Hermione, wouldn't you?" Mary Granger asked. "Because you have more experience? No offence, Hermione, dear, I'm just trying to figure out how it all works."

"At this point? Probably," he admitted. "However, the whole point of the apprenticeship is for her to learn to how to create solutions on her own. As her experience grows, she will become faster, better and wiser. She will also come to have a style and an approach which will be unique to her. There is an intuition that one gets after spending enough time brewing, and that is why making potions is an _art_ , as well as a science. One day, when she will be a Potions Mistress, she will have her own areas of talent and expertise where she will outshine even me. Don't look at me like that, Weasley, Granger will never be my equal in certain areas, either. All Masters have their specialties. I wasn't paying a compliment, I was stating a truism. You _do_ know what a truism is, I presume?"

Mary's smile never wavered. Hermione was more relieved than she could express that Snape had decided to be nice to her parents - or as nice as he could be, anyway - and not antagonize them. Otherwise, his presence there, which  _she'd_ insisted upon, would have been an utter disaster.

"She's always studying something, our Hermione," Mary said, proudly. "Nowadays she's so passionate about history, isn't she? That, at least, is a topic I understand, even if I was never paying much attention to it in school. She's managed to find so many interesting facts, however, that I'm thinking of picking up history as a hobby, too."

"History, Granger?" Snape asked Hermione, clearly curios.

"Yes, mostly wizard-magical creature relations, even though sometimes I come across interesting facts that aren't exactly related to that," Hermione said.

"You didn't know about it?" Mary asked, surprised.

"She hasn't mentioned it," Snape replied. 

"Oh, but that's a pity. She's shown me some of the books she's researching and they seem fascinating."

"Really? Can I see?" he asked.

Hermione noticed that Ron's face darkened. They'd never officially decided it, but the downstairs of the house, with the kitchen and the living room, was more public - it was where they received colleagues, acquaintances who weren't very close, friends of friends. The upstairs of the house, with the bedroom and library, was their private space, where only their closer friends and family were allowed. She could choose: invite Snape upstairs into their inner sanctum, with all the subtle implications that involved, or refuse him for no apparent reason.

Hermione had no doubt that Snape was capable of taking no for an answer, but he wasn't often openly curious about things and she wanted to indulge him - and brag about her books, of course. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn't think of a good reason to refuse, aside from the fact that  _she_ knew and  _Ron_ knew that the library was much more private than the living room. 

"Why not?" she said, but tried to soften the blow against Ron by making it all less intimate. "Who else wants to come? Ginny? Neville? Luna?"

For a second, she thought Ron would object, causing yet another public scene, but then he clenched his jaw and looked away. Luna accepted the invitation, but she was the only one. Even the Grangers declined, because Arthur had found the perfect opportunity to grab their attention again, now that Snape was busy. Hermione even invited Ron, but he shook his head almost violently. Thus, the small contingent of three went up the stairs. Hermione had never felt that huge a rift between the living room and the upstairs before.

"Right through here," she said, a bit nervously.

"Hermione," Luna said, turning large eyes on her as they entered the library. "I didn't mean to say anything around Ron, but are you aware you have dundlegollems around the house?"

"What do we have?" Hermione asked.

The library was small - merely three bookcases, the last of which was half-filled. One day, it would be top-to-bottom with books, but Hermione had only just started her collection. Snape stepped closer and studied the spines of books.

"Dundlegollems," Luna repeated. "They feed on stress and fear. I could notice a few behind Ron tonight."

"I'll try to take care of them," Hermione said, her mouth suddenly dry. Luna could be a bit too perceptive sometimes.

The younger woman nodded sagely and touched the books. 

"What's your favorite part of history?"

"I'm not sure I have a favorite time," Hermione replied. "Every age is fascinating in its own way. The only problem is that life is too short to learn everything. A philosopher's stone would come in handy."

Luna picked up a book and leafed through it. Snape was still studying the titles, politely keeping his distance from the shelves, as if he wasn't sure he was allowed to touch anything. Watching him watch her books, Hermione realized that his robes were finer than usual, and that his hair was freshly washed. He didn't look handsome, precisely, but she found him a pleasant, comforting sight. She wished she could have him around more often - not that Ron would ever agree to it. Or if he would, he'd do so grudgingly and hate every moment of Snape being there.

 _Love requires small compromises and sacrifices_ , Hermione thought. Then another thought occurred to her,  _But why does it?_

Snape turned and caught her staring at him. He didn't say anything, and she didn't feel the need to look away, or excuse herself, or laugh and make a joke. She didn't feel like doing anything at all, other than keep looking for as long as Snape didn't mind. And it was simple and warm and pleasant, as if they understood each other through that gaze alone, and neither was in any hurry to look away.

 _Being with Snape is easy because he doesn't matter,_ she told herself.  _If he did, things would get complicated again._

The thought hit her - a closer Snape, one who was actually in her life, whom she had to be careful around, and smile at and be happy for and then the image hit her like a brick to the stomach, almost physical, almost like a kick, a dirty blow from where she least expected it. Her eyes darted away from him and she heard herself sob and suddenly her vision swam and she felt like she was falling, even though she knew she was still standing. It was never going to get better, things were never going to be simple and fun and not complicated. It was always going to be sacrifices and compromises and keeping a part of her life separate from another and not sharing her research with Ron and not going places and trying to do less and acting happy and making aphrodisiacs to pretend to be normal and an endless cycle of endless days of normality one after another and she should be happy, happy, happy and it was all so tiresome, and she would eventually get there with Snape and she'd be close and she'd be happy and she'd be fake and it would no longer be simple and easy and she couldn't handle complications, and she started shivering as if cold to the bone and the walls were closing in on her and closing her in the tiny box she went into every night from which there was no escape, only lies, lies, lies and daydreams and small moments of pretend freedom before she was back, back, back and drowning in the life she had and from which only death could provide an escape.

"Hermione?" Luna said. 

She felt her face wet with tears and she put her hands over it, trying to hide it, hide the wetness, hide the shame, hide the fear, hide the misery, hide the failure.

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking, stumbling back against the wall. "I don't..."

"Granger," Snape said, and she heard the worry in his voice and then his hands were on his shoulders and it would never be simple again and whenever she found someone she liked and brought them closer, they'd be another stone around her neck, and she would break, break into pieces and drown and fail it all.

"Don't look at me!" she cried, horrified, terrified that they were seeing her like this, falling apart with nothing gone wrong yet, bursting into tears although she was doing it all right just until then, but now they could see that she was not like them, not normal, not fine, not happy, not okay, not able, not good. "Leave me, I'm fine."

"You are  _not_ fine, Granger," Snape snapped. "Have you taken any potions? Made any experiments?" 

"No. No." 

"Lovegood, get Weasley.  _Ronald_ Weasley. _Just_ Ronald Weasley. Now."

Luna left the room in a hurry and then there were other questions while she was failing, drowning, falling, dying. Spells? Curses? She said no, no, no, she wasn't cursed, no, it was nothing, don't complicate it, it is simple, no more complicated.

"It's not  _nothing_ , Granger."

And she was on the floor, shaking, in a ball against the wall, with Snape holding her hand and asking things, all sorts of things now, asking about dreams and sleep and pain and fear and she was crying because she felt them all and she was breaking and she couldn't not break, not when she gave, gave, gave and tried, tried, tried and never, ever, ever failed, no, never. 

And then Ron was there, and he tackled Snape to the ground and nearly beat him up for harming her and Hermione shook and cackled hysterically and scared because everyone was trying to save her although there was nothing to save her  _from_ except themselves.

"Ron, stop!" Luna cried. "Snape was helping her! He told me to get you, for Merlin's sake."

And then Ron, good Merlin, he left Snape alone and rushed to her and stood like a fool because he didn't know what to do or what was wrong and that was alright, because there was nothing wrong except the entire world and she alone knew it. Ron raised his wand and tried  _finite incantatem_ and nothing happened and she shook and Ron fell to his knees in front of her and she was shaking and sobbing and then, just like that, she was slowly regaining her breath, though she did not know why.

She stopped shaking as violently as before, although the cold didn't fade. The oppressive box in her mind was retreating - it seemed like a concept now, rather than an actual thing.

"What's going on?" she whispered. "I'm scared."

"How long have you been miserable, Granger?" Snape asked.

His question sounded stupid to her. Wasn't it clear? Wasn't it obvious? Hadn't everyone heard her complain until they got sick of it?

"I don't know. Two years, since the war ended?" 

A small, bitter laugh from Snape, who was sitting on the floor, his robes ruffled by Ron's attack. Ron was on his knees next to Hermione, looking at her and Snape, looking on the verge of panic.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked. "I don't recognize the spell."

"It's not a spell, Weasley," Snape said. "It's misery. Granger, do you have flashbacks with the war? The fight? The deaths? Any other obsessive memories?"

"No," she said. "Why?"

"Then it's not trauma related. You've had a panic attack. Have you ever had one before?"

She cocked her head at him and wiped her face, feeling rationality return slowly. She'd heard of panic attacks before, of course, but she'd never really stopped to consider what they meant or what they might actually feel like.

"No," she said. "No, not this. Never before."

"You have trouble sleeping?" Snape said.

"Often. Yes. I feel worried about things."

"You might be depressed," Snape said.

"I said that before, too, you know," she said, slowly. "I said I might be a bit depressed. But I never meant it. I thought I was just having a few bad days. And then it was a few bad weeks. And now I just..."

"Hermione," Ron breathed, then took her in his arms and kissed her hair and her forehead and hugged her tight. "Why don't you tell me when things go bad? Don't pretend all's good, you know I believe you, please, Mione, tell me these things. What will I do with you?"

Luna was also sitting on the floor, looking worriedly at her.

"I'm sorry," Hermione whispered. "I didn't mean to do this. I've ruined this whole evening."

"No, Mione, if you're not feeling well, everybody will understand," Ron said. "You can go lie down."

"I don't want to lie down," she said. "I'm fine now. Really."

"But..."

"I'm fine. I'll go wash my face, then let's head downstairs. Please don't tell anyone about this. It's too embarrassing."

"But Hermione..."

"I'm fine." 

She stood up to prove it, then did her best to smile.

"I prepared this bloody dinner, I'm not going to miss it, panic attack or no."

And that was final. She ruffled Ron's hair playfully, passed by a pensive Luna, then headed towards the bathroom at the end of the corridor with one last glance at Snape, whose eyes seemed to bore into her very soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the idea that Severus gives Hermione chocolate mousse has been stuck in my head since reading phoenix.writing's "The Problem With Purity", a really awesome SS/HG fanfic, in which much mousse is eaten. (Also, it has way more plot than this story. Check it out.)


	8. Under Pressure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, recent chapters *are* all named after old songs.
> 
> "Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking  
> Can't we give ourselves one more chance?  
> Why can't we give love that one more chance?  
> Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?..."

It turned out that, after Hermione washed her face and removed all traces of crying, not even her own mother could tell something was wrong. Ron threw her a worried glance or two during the rest of dinner, but Snape was as unreadable as it could be expected from a spy, and Luna was surprisingly discreet. Christmas dinner ended peacefully and well. After it was over, they cleaned up and went to bed without another word about what happened and, for once, Hermione fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

She woke up at around seven, slipped out of bed, grabbed a book from the library, picked up the last remaining bit of chocolate mousse from the fridge and curled up under a blanked in the living room, ready to enjoy a quiet morning reading. She was a morning person, but Ron was more of a night owl - getting out of bed before 10 AM on a holiday was nearly unthinkable for him.

Yet, merely minutes later, he showed up in the doorway.

"You're up early," she said. 

"I can't sleep."

He said it with such a serious, straight face that Hermione smirked.

"What? Insomnia?" she replied. "Tossing and turning, unable to sleep a wink at this time horribly early time of morning?"

"Don't poke fun," he grumbled. "I'm worried about you, you know. That thing yesterday. That panic attack. Blimey, Hermione, I don't know what to do. I'm useless."

"No, you're not," she replied, but the moment she said it, she felt like a liar. Ron really didn't know what to do, most of the time. Unlike Snape, who seemed always in control, who could figure out what was wrong with her, who could point out her faults and mistakes so gently.

"You know," Ron went on, "the moment Luna came downstairs and said you needed my help with one of her imaginary creatures, my first thought was that you were all alone with Snape and who knows what the two of you were doing up there."

"What?!" Hermione said, startled.

"I know it's stupid," he told her. "I know, you don't need to tell me. I... Bloody hell, Hermione, I know when my jealousy is stupid. I'm sorry. I knew it then, but I kept picturing the two of you snogging in the library. Or worse. I was scared that Luna was trying to tell me that you'd locked yourself in the bedroom with him."

"Locked myself in the bedroom with Snape?!"

Ron raised a hand.

"I knew it was stupid. I knew, but I kept picturing it anyway. I did, and it scared me. Then I walked inside the room and you were crying and he was standing over you and all those thoughts vanished. It looked like he was hurting you, so I didn't think, I just attacked. Evil wizards, that I can fight. I can lay down my life for you. I could die for you."

"Me, too," Hermione whispered. "For you. But Ron..."

"But panic attacks?! I don't know what to do about that, love. I'm lost. I don't know anything. I'm watching you fall apart more and more, I'm seeing you miserable day after day and it drives me insane. I don't know how to help you, or reach you, or understand you. Sometimes I wish you really did fall in love with another bloke, because then... it'd be simpler. Not easier, but at least, that I'd understand. I'm not sure how to make you happy," he said softly. "I know you love me. I know I love you. It makes it worse, somehow, that we have everything we need to be blissful, but it's not working out. I feel like I've failed you. I've never been a really awesome guy at anything, but-"

"No!" she stopped him. "You  _are_ awesome. You're great. You're my  _Ron_. This isn't about your  _ability_  to make me happy. It's me. You're perfectly alright. It's me, there's something wrong with _me_."

Ron looked away, staring in the distance so intently that it took Hermione a second to realize that he wasn't looking at something only he could see, but holding back tears.

"That's what mum said, too," he said softly.

"Your mum said I'm the one messing this up?" she asked, hollowly.

Ron's eyes whipped to her, startled and horrified.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, no, not about you, not about us. When I was... when I was ten or so, and everyone except me and Gin was off to school, and dad was at work, I went downstairs and found mum crying over a photo of Charlie. He'd just found work and was moving out, so she was upset. I told her that, well, she still had me. You know what kids are like. I thought I could fix anything in the world. And she said I didn't count as much as Charlie, who was such a good child, or Bill, because he was her first boy, and I was one too many, thank God Ginny had come along because she'd been tired of boys."

"She said  _what_?!" Hermione said, shocked. "I can't... she  _couldn't have_ , Molly loves you all so much and..."

Ron turned and gave her an almost desperate smile and Hermione stopped.

"Mum told me I couldn't fill in for anyone else, because I wasn't really clever, or charming, or the first, or funny, or a girl. I was just Ron, and she'd lay down her life for me if need be, but I'd never be like Bill or the twins or even Percy, who tried so hard, bless him. And I started crying and she told me that it was fine, you know? She still loved me, just not as much as she loved the others. I was  _alright_ , but not enough. If I'd been born at any other time, she would have been so happy. It wasn't my fault, really. It was hers. And she fell asleep with her head on the table ten minutes later. I flooed dad at work. He came home in a whirlwind and took her to St. Mungo's and they checked her - we pieced things back together later. She'd been shopping in Diagon Alley and one of her old friends invited her for a drink. She accepted and they slipped her some sort of booze mixed with Veritaserum and something to block her memory. Later, we checked with that friend, but she'd been somewhere else at the time, so it wasn't her at all. Maybe it'd been a Death Eater under Polyjuice, trying to get some information out of her. Mum came home sooner than expected, though, and the potions kicked in at home. I found her when she was at her most honest. She never remembered anything past returning home. I never told her what she said."

"Oh Merlin," Hermione breathed.

"So that's that," Ron said, bitterly. "It's never me. I'm alright. To die for. Just never good enough."

She told him everything then - how she'd be with him forever, how she cared, how he was truly special to her, how they'd work it all out, how she'd get better. She only wished she could hold all her promises.

* * *

When Hermione returned to work after the holidays, she felt almost relieved. Ron and her were walking on eggshells around each other, worried about doing or saying something hurtful, putting on smiles, trying to make each other comfortable and ending up only more stressed and fake than always. Things were falling apart. Things were getting better. She was trying. He was trying. They would fix everything. They would break it all. She wanted more. She wanted less. She wanted other people to help out, she wanted Ron to help out, she wanted Ron to stop helping.

"How are you doing?" Snape asked.

"Same old, same old," she replied. "Do you have any books on depression? I don't want to talk to strangers about my problems. Especially when they might gossip to the Prophet about me."

"I'll see what I can find." 

Surprisingly, he got up to do just that, and Hermione was about to protest that it could wait until they finished work, then remembered that he lived right next door to the laboratory, even if he'd never asked her over.

"What happens if I have a panic attack here? At work? While doing on something?" Hermione asked.

"You place a stasis charm on the potion," Snape said. "Don't wait to see how bad it gets. Use the charm first. However, you never seemed to have focus issues while brewing before, so you might not start now. Try not to worry about it too much."

She did worry, however, so she waited around for a few minutes, until he returned with two volumes, neither of which was very thick.

"These are probably the most appropriate for your problems," he said. 

She nodded and flipped through the books. He probably  _had_ researched this sort of issues with just the sort of determination she had when researching her own subjects of interest. Surprisingly, she felt comfortable around Snape, not minding that he'd seen her at her worst. She was as comfortable as she used to be around Ron and Harry years before.

On a whim, she turned to Snape, who was writing down the list of ingredients they needed to buy.

"Why did you call Ron upstairs when I had the panic attack?" she asked. "You were doing just fine comforting me."

"Because, Granger, it would have been terribly inappropriate otherwise."

"Why?"

He looked up at her and scoffed.

"Downstairs, the clueless boyfriend, enjoying a dinner with his family. Upstairs, she, in the arms of another man, distressed and oh, so vulnerable."

"I was panicking," she said. "It's not like you were taking advantage of me. I'm sure the unwritten code of relationships can go bugger off in times like that."

"Sometimes, Granger, you make me question your intelligence."

"Why? What was wrong with you helping me? You were there, he wasn't. You knew what was wrong, he did not. You could help, he didn't know how to."

"Are you serious?" Snape studied her face, then sighed. "You're serious. God save us all from earnest Gryffindors."

"What?" she asked, irritated. "What's wrong with my goddamned view of things? He was pissed I went to Solsbury Hill with you, too, and I still don't really get it. If he wants to do things with me, why isn't he doing things with me? If he doesn't, why can't I do them with others? Why does he keep caring about all these things which don't really matter in the grand scheme of things?"  _Why does he worry so much that I'll sleep with you_ , she wondered to herself.

"But they do matter, Granger."

"Why?"

"Why, why, why, why - you're like a toddler today, apprentice." 

He stood from his desk and looked at her. Hermione was staring straight at him, almost challenging him. She wanted peace and quiet and a bit of  _fun_ and she'd fight for her right to do so.

"Why can't I be free to... to go to Solsbury Hill or show other men my books, if that's all it is and I'm not cheating on him or anything? Why am I under suspicion? Why are  _you_ acting like it would be wrong to save me from a  _panic attack?!_ "

Snape's eyes were on her and she knew he could read the challenge and was rising up to it. Ron would balk and try to get her to calm down, but she wanted  _answers_ and he master would offer them  _or else._

"Let me be the one to tell you all about the dragons and the bees," he said. "Because you seem to be out of your depth. There are many types of people out there, Granger. Some are jealous and want to know everything heir spouses do. Others are inherently trusting and will mind very little. Some rare kinds will be interested in having a third person in their lives, or in their beds. Some like to do perverted things to each other, or to fulfill certain needs with people they are not entangled with romantically. I have known a woman who had a special relationship with a _friend_ who bound her with ropes and took photos, and her husband had come to agree with the arrangement once he understood her. In some relationships, my holding you would have, indeed, not meant a thing other than I was helping you through a difficult moment. Your relationship with Ronald is not of that kind."

"And why not?" she asked. "You just glanced at me and Ron and thought,  _hmm, I instantly understand them_?"

"I didn't need to  _glance_ , Granger," he said. "You were doing extra time here not too long ago, and not because you needed money, not because you were excited about work, but because you didn't want to return home. Troubles. Maybe not fights, but definitely your home is not a paradise. What's working for you two? Not communication, since he was going on about you not telling him things. Not understanding, since you don't seem impressed with his ability to comfort you. Not sex, since you're making aphrodisiac potions secretly."

Hermione gaped.

"How did you know about that? I thought I cleaned up properly... I can't have..."

"You cleaned up," Snape said. "But I keep an inventory of ingredients, Granger. I can see what's been taken over and over, in quantities sufficient for a single person's _semi-_ _frequent_ use. So, knowing all this, should I have barged in, then? Should I have done the job Weasley can't do properly? Talk to you, understand you, comfort you? What's left for  _him_ to do, then? Sleep with you? Or would you prefer a replacement in bed, as well?"

Hermione reddened. 

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Don't I?" he said, quietly, and there was something in his eyes that was dark and suggestive, almost as if he were asking her,  _daring her_ to admit that she wanted him.

The anger rose and betrayal rose in her, and Hermione wanted to scream, to bite him, to fight him, to hit him for daring to let her believe in him and his friendship and then... this.

"Relationships have their ups and downs!" she nearly shouted at him. "I love him, and that's enough, don't you see? It's hard sometimes, and things get complicated and messed up and I don't know what to do and he doesn't know what to do and it's  _difficult_ and  _challenging_ , but that's how it is! Sacrifice and compromise and making an effort! Love is complicated and hard and that's why they always cut films and stories at the very beginning, because then it all looks so simple, even if it become so much tougher in time! I'm building a goddamned home, Snape, I'm doing it all and I'll manage it because I _love_ him and he  _matters_. And if that means taking a short break sometimes to go to goddamned Solsbury Hill or to be comforted by someone else, because for once it can't be about _us_ , well, don't I _deserve_ it?!"

Snape stared at her, speechless for once. Hermione was flustered and angry, angry that he was missing the point, that he, too, had brought up cheating, feeling dirty because he'd suggested himself as a replacement, when all she wanted was to make things better, get well, _build_ a home. And Snape kept staring and staring, and saying nothing.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked. When he didn't answer, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. " _Stop staring at me like that!_ "

"Granger," Snape said, pulling away from her grasp. "Your idiocy will never cease to be a source of surprise to me."

She hit him. Not across the face, the way she'd initially wanted to, but a punch in the arm, strong and angry.

"Don't you dare," she said. "Don't you dare insult me!" 

She started to hit him again, but he grabbed her hands and pushed her against the wall, despite her struggles. His body pressed against her and she felt trapped, so she struggled even more.

"Snape! Unhand me, Snape!" she cried.

"Then stop assaulting me!" he growled. "I can't believe this."

She looked straight into his eyes and contemplated headbutting him. 

"Hit me again and all bets are off, Granger," he said between gritted teeth. "I've dueled my whole life, I can take you in any fight, fair or unfair, magical or Muggle."

"You'd hit a woman?" she demanded.

He had the nerve to laugh, his eyes flashing with anger.

"You're so  _obviously_  the one to talk."

The ridiculousness of the situation hit her, too, and mortification set in. She'd hit Snape. And because of what? Because he'd explained what she herself already knew, but didn't want to admit in her heart - that her relationship to Ron was horrible? That nothing worked? 

Doubt settled in. Snape couldn't have been  _suggestive_ \- he was talking about the aphrodisiac potions, not making a goddamned proposal. Not him, not the gentleman who'd called for Ron, he would never...

"Oh, Merlin," she gasped. "Oh,  _Merlin_."

Snape let her go and she slipped to the floor. He sat next to her and massaged his temples.

"Granger, if I'd known you were crazy, I would never have insulted you," he snapped. His words could have been mistaken for a joke, but his voice said that he was very, very angry.

"I've never hit anyone before," she said in the tiniest voice, hiding her face behind her knees. "Except Malfoy. In third year. I slapped him when he called me a mudblood. I was so tense, what with the Time Turner and all the classes."

"I stand corrected," Snape said. "If I'd known you turn crazy when you're stressed, I would have waited until you were on vacation to insult you."

"I don't suppose you could forgive me," she said.

"I don't suppose you could  _apologize_ first," he snapped.

"I'm sorry," she said with a tiny voice. "I'm so, so sorry."

Snape sighed. It didn't sound like he was forgiving her. It sounded like he was a dragon preparing to tear into her. Hermione didn't dare look up. She remembered him from school now, she remembered he was a Death Eater who could do terrible things, and she'd gone ahead and provoked him.

"Sorry doesn't fix things," he said eventually. "Normally, I'd send you home, to rest, and return when you're better. However, I don't think that's an option."

A shiver of fear went through her and she stilled.

"It wouldn't be an option because you seem to become even more stressed there," he explained, probably having seen her tense up, and she allowed herself to relax a little. "Hermione, you messed up."

"I know," she said.

"You assaulted me."

"I know."

"I don't want to think that one day you'll pick up the knife you use to cut ingredients and stab me with it. I've been through enough at the hands of the Dark Lord to not wish to be on my toes around my apprentice."

She realized that, as scared as she was, he'd been frightened, too.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"I'll forgive you," he said. "Not this instance. Later. But, for Merlin's sake. Hitting me is your smallest problem. I keep thinking I know what's going on, but you surprise me, Hermione. What you've just told me is... worrying. Relationships aren't all hardship. Love isn't all sacrifice. Being with someone is about comfort and communication, about being safe and cherished. Do you get that with Weasley?"

She sniffed, trying not to cry, not to feel terrified at what she'd become.

"I used to," she said. "Maybe. At the beginning. It's... not working out anymore. We don't talk much. He doesn't really care about my research. I don't... I don't really want to know about his Auror work, either. It's like... we don't click. I don't know how to make us click. Isn't love supposed to fix this? Sometimes, when I look at him, I want to die. I can't reach him and I want to die. We're growing further apart and I want to die."

Hermione chanced a look at him. The anger was still there, the fury.

"I leave you in the arms of your lover, Granger," he said, "and he sends you here worse off than when you left."

"It's not his fault," she said. "He tries."

Snape got up and extended a hand to her. She took it fearfully and he looked into her eyes, seeming to soften.

"I called you a toddler, but a scared kitten might be more to the point," he said. "Come. I won't harm you."

She followed him out the door the office, into the cold - he locked the door - then through the yard and around the house to another entrance. Hermione had always though he lived somewhere close, but it was only now that she realized it was the same building, even if there were no doors from one side to the other.

"You allowed me into your home," he said, "it's only fair I allow you into mine."

A small room with a few shoe racks where they left their shoes. There was a coat hanger, but they hadn't brought their coats. Beyond, there were the living room and an open kitchen. A few shirts were lying about - he banished them upstairs with a flick of his wand. Shelves of books, a few plants. A television, which was unexpected. Green couch, a very fluffy green carpet, black table, black bookcase. A few plants. A few framed photos on the walls, mostly artistic black and white, fuzzy things which didn't amaze on their own, but which worked in the context of the room. The kitchen was separated by a bar and had cream furniture and a steel-gray fridge. 

He took out milk from the fridge, poured it into a small pot and set it to boiling. 

"You may look at the books," he informed her. "Please do not remove them from the shelves without asking. Do not touch anything without asking, unless you wish to sit on the couch. That you may do."

She frowned at him. 

"I don't appreciate people interfering in my life," he said. "Or going through my belongings."

She nodded, even though she felt he was exaggerating. She approached the shelves while he did whatever it was in the kitchen. Shelves of potions, an unexpected amount of fiction, both classical and contemporary and even some genre. A shelf dedicated to psychological issues - she almost reached out to take a book off the shelf from sheer reflex, but stopped herself just in time. Other shelves with charms and dueling. Small things in front of the books, here and there - a small locomotive made of wood, a seashell, a bell. They looked like souvenirs, perhaps. She wanted to pick them up and look at them more closely. She abstained.

He brought two mugs of cocoa and, when she sat down, he summoned a blanket, which he threw her.

"I'm not cold," she said, but put it around her shoulders anyway.

"Hermione..." he said, then paused, as if unsure how to phrase it. "Never attack me again. Or anyone else."

"I'll try not to," she said.

"Then I forgive you."

She bowed her head in thanks, then reached for her cocoa. 

"Hermione..." he said. "Your relationship isn't healthy. Your friends should have told you so - both of you."

"But we love each other," Hermione said. "That's good, isn't it? That's what marriages are built on."

"And how long will it take until you hate each other?" Snape asked. "Until you're so careful with one another that it hurts, until you hate the care and delicacy the other shows you, because it means you must reciprocate in kind? Until the sweetness tuns to poison?" 

She lowered her eyes and sipped her cocoa, not answering, too busy with another thought. What did people do when their relationships failed? They broke up. They moved out. They stopped living together. The thought made her feel relief, before it stabbed her in the heart: she didn't want to hurt Ron, not after everything, not after how much he'd given her, how much he'd tried, not after he'd told her about Molly. She wanted to break up with him. She didn't want to hurt him. She wanted so much to go on living with him and have a happy life. She was sick of trying to be cheerful, she was sick of trying to make things better. She loved him desperately. She was desperate that she loved him less and less.

She put the mug down on the table.

"Will it only get worse?" she asked.

He froze, then shrugged ever so slightly.

"Who knows," he deadpanned. "I'm no expert in these matters."

She remembered the look they'd shared in the library, the way he'd asked if she wanted Ron to be replaced in bed, as well. He wasn't lewd or presumptive, the way she'd thought in her moment of madness - but there was definitely something there.

 _It'd be simpler if you were in love with another bloke_ , she remembered Ron saying. 

Hermione knew the truth: she was too much of a coward to break up with Ron, not with all the past between them. She couldn't leave without trying again and again to make things better. Did she really think she could stop the downwards spiral? She was almost certain that she could, but then again, she'd kept  _improving_ their lives for months, with worse and worse results. She didn't have the bravery to end it all, not on her own. 

She stood, letting the blanket fall on the couch behind her. The fact that she was considering this at all was a sign that she was either insane, or impulsive, or she would really be better off without Ron.

If she were alone, she could take a long vacation, go to Asia, be alone for a while. The thought made her happy.

"Hermione?" Snape asked as she approached him.

She walked up to his armchair and realized she had no idea how to do this. She didn't want to make sit down on his lap, she didn't want to bend over awkwardly...

"Snape," she replied simply. "I'm testing a theory I've just developed. Stand up."

He did, understandably wary. She stood close to him, well within his personal space, moving slowly so he'd have a chance to retreat if he didn't want this. 

Snape made no move as she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Slowly, as if he were afraid of scaring her, too, he opened his mouth and deepened the kiss. His lips were soft, and he tasted of mint and cocoa, and she had no idea what she was doing because he was so much slower, more controlled and cautious than Ron. It was confusing and electrifying and pleasant all at once, and she wanted more, so she grabbed his hair to pull him in closer. He groaned and it went straight to her belly. She'd made Severus Snape  _groan_.

He maneuvered them, guiding her until her back was pressed against the wall and he was pressed against her front.

"How's that theory going?" he hissed in her ear, then leaned down to lick behind her earlobe in a deliciously wicked way.

"Surprisingly well," she panted. "Better than I'd expected."

His mouth went down to suck and nibble delicious trails on her neck and she moaned. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she definitely felt better than she had with Ron for a very long time. A replacement in bed, too?

She giggled, feeling high.

"Something funny?" Snape asked.

"It tickles," she lied, and he kissed her again.

She'd worried that he'd be a storm, in a whirlwind of passion, but he was slow and considerate, as if they had all the time in the world just for them. And then Snape pulled away from the kiss and leaned her head against her shoulder.

"I can't do this," he told her.

"What?" she asked, feeling a boulder land in her stomach.

He kissed her neck again, then took her hand.

"I want to," Snape said. "And I'd love to, but I'm not sure if you know what you're doing. You'll hate me for this."

"No, I won't," she protested.

"You were attacking me not long ago for daring to infer that your relationship with Weasley is less than perfect. I'd find it hard to believe you are at your best."

He walked with her to the couch and, to her relief, he sat with her.

"I'm a fool," Snape went on, "to reveal my intentions like his. I promise, our work relationship will continue as usual-"

"What I want," Hermione cut him off, "are two things. The first is selfish. I want to find out if I'm really frigid. The second is to end things with Ron - but not with the _it's not you, it's me_ speech. With something so bad that he'll blame me entirely. I want him to hate me, so he doesn't hate himself. I can't leave him otherwise. He'll... It'd tear me apart. I'm sorry if you think it's about you and me. It's not. I don't think I can jump into another relationship any time soon. I don't want to try, not even with you. I don't want to deceive you. I just... this is a simple solution."

"He'll hate me, too," Snape said.

"Oh, yes," Hermione said, then burst out laughing. "But he's always hated you. He kept thinking I might cheat on him with you, so why not? Unless you'd rather not. I'd understand. I'm sorry to use you."

Silence fell. Seconds passed one after the other and became minutes, and she waited and waited, wondering if it was too much to ask of him. Maybe she'd miscalculated. Maybe he wasn't interested in as little as this, a simple tumble with a dirty purpose. Maybe he wanted more.

She couldn't give more. She didn't have anything to give.

"Alright," Snape said softly, and she turned to look at him, hope in her eyes. "But not now. I want you to be sure of this. If you're still determined on Friday..."

"I will be," she assured him. "Mark my words, I will be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been rewritten about a billion times, due to various mishaps, such as losing the first drafts, losing edits, all sorts of stuff.
> 
> Hermione is a bit off and rash in this one, so it's not just you. I feel like she's reached the end of her patience and she's starting to think things are a great idea, even when they aren't. She'll get to worry about propositioning Snape in chapter 9. Hurray!
> 
> Also, for a non-fan of angst, I've definitely added a lot of it in this story. O_o


	9. The woman who sold the world

On Tuesday, on her way to work, Hermione bought a David Bowie tape, which she listened to all throughout the day, not talking to Snape any more than was strictly needed for work. She wasn't hostile, but she didn't feel like she could face the man she'd just propositioned the night before in a complete dick move. 

 _Cover for me while I throw you to the wolves,_ she thought.  _Go me, so great, so subtle, all planned out. You've suffered a lot, Severus, take a bit of my suffering, too, you won't even feel its weight on top of your giant mountain of suffering._

That night, she went into a bookshop and bought a few books on impulse, then she settled with them in a cafe in Muggle London, where people she knew wouldn't be likely to find her. She didn't normally enjoy fiction - all the things she could be doing instead of reading stories! - but for once she didn't feel like learning or doing anything useful. She got a novel called "Faerie Tale" by Raymond Feist, which was alright, but then she skipped forward out of curiosity and noticed a sexy scene, so she set it aside for when she didn't feel like sex was interesting to everyone in the world except her. She got a comic book called "The Books of Magic" because the character on the cover looked a lot like Harry, what with the round glasses and the owl next to him and she couldn't  _believe_ it was in a Muggle bookshop, wasn't the Ministry watching out for this sort of stuff? - only for the story to turn out to be not too similar to Harry's at all. And she got "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, then realized she didn't feel like reading anything Victorian.

What with skipping from book to book, she got home quite late that night, and told Ron she'd been busy at work, which he seemed quite skeptical about.

She spent Wednesday outside, too, going to movies, hunting for new fiction books, browsing record shops, going to the swimming pool and being late home again. When she returned home, she sat down to write Snape a letter while she was alone, because Ron was apparently even later than her. He appeared not that much after she sent her owl.

"Hey, love," he said. 

"Hey."

"What have you been up to today?"

"Nothing much," she said. "I bought a few books. Fiction." She almost wanted to tell him about her day, about swimming, about going out, but she felt too tired for it all - especially since she'd made a fairy big decision which she'd need all her energy for. "I was inside all day otherwise."

Ron frowned, almost suspiciously.

"Inside all day?" he repeated.

"Yeah."

"You should get out more."

"I will," she assured him with a weak smile, then reached out to take his hand. "Thank you for taking care of me, Ron. Through... all of this."

"It doesn't work out so well, though, does it?" he asked, a bit coldly.

Hermione would normally have felt bothered by his tone, but there was no point to fighting anymore, so she kept smiling.

"But you try anyway. And that matters a lot."

His expression changed and she thought it flashed from coldness to fear, before he recomposed himself.

"Does it?"

"Yes." 

They sat and watched TV together that evening and Hermione smiled more than she had for what felt like a long, long time. Snape's reply by owl came a bit later and she skimmed through it quickly.

"What is that?" Ron asked.

"Snape," she said simply. "It's a reply about some work stuff."

"Oh." 

Maybe he suspected something about her and Snape - Merlin knew he'd been jealous enough about it for a long time, but this time Ron decided not to throw a tantrum about it.

"I need to head off to work a bit early tomorrow," Ron said. "Is that alright for you?"

"Sure," Hermione answered. "It's perfect."

* * *

Hermione met Snape early he next morning in a small cafe in Muggle London, in a small alcove where they couldn't be easily seen or heard by the waiters or any of the few patrons.

"I'm sorry," she said, right after greeting him and ordering coffee. "I shouldn't have done any of the things I did on Monday."

"I've already forgiven you for hitting me," he replied. 

"Thank you. But I meant the other part, too. The part where I suggested you should sleep with me so you can take the blame for my failed relationship. I can't believe you told me you _would_ do it, if I repeated my request on Friday."

"I was rather confident you wouldn't need too long to see the flaws in that plan," Snape replied with a smirk.

"If I wouldn't have, though, would you have gone through with it?"

He sobered and looked at her over the coffee. The bench Hermione was sitting on creaked and she spun around instinctively, as if to face a danger that wasn't there.

"Are you sure you want to know the answer to that?" Snape asked, seeing her skittishness.

"Very much so. I wondered why you didn't refuse me outright."

"It is... unwise... to refuse someone as determined as you to cock up their lives. It's best to deflect," Snape said. " Now, to answer your other question..."

He took a sip of coffee and sighed.

"Well, answer it, then."

He looked her in the eyes.

"Yes. I would have."

"Why?"

"Must you know everything?"

"Yes."

"Typical," Snape muttered. "Then, because I gave my word."

Hermione studied him. She was getting to know him too well, to see the discomfort behind his curt replies, to feel him retreating behind a haughty or sarcastic tone. She was determined not to let him get away with it, though.

"You're still not telling me everything," she said.

"If I put my heart on my bloody sleeve, Granger," he said, almost conversationally, "I'll expect nothing but the same in return. There are questions I have been too  _delicate_ to ask."

She snorted. "Fine. I'll answer anything you want."

He arranged his sleeves carefully, as if they were bothering him by being improperly arranged around his arms. Then he looked up again.

"I would have slept with you, Granger, because I am a human being." His voice had become sarcastic, as if mocking himself. "Many of my students and colleagues have often failed to see me as such, but I can assure you that I am not made of stone. Your intelligence is attractive.  _You_ are attractive, as a woman. You also know me fairly well and, by this point,  _like_ me. I'd rather give something other than meaningless one night stands and prostitutes a chance. Is that _honest_ enough for you?"

She could read between the lines: desperate for human contact, lonely, wanting her because he needed... appreciation?

"So... no feelings for me?" she asked.

"Merlin, Hermione," he breathed, annoyed. "Do you think we're in a bloody  _romance_?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head. "I was trying to ascertain how much of a _bitch_  I've been to you. If you were, I don't know, in love with me, my idiocy would have been a lot worse, wouldn't it?"

Snape leaned back, some of his amusement returning. Hermione, however, wasn't very convinced of his honesty. Somehow, his response had been a bit too rough, too dismissive - was he looking down on the idea of romance? Did he have feeling for her, but refuse to admit them? No, she highly doubted he was madly in love with her, although he might want  _more_ than a tumble.

"I've handled Voldemort. I've handled  _Lily's death_. I think I can handle you being an idiotic, petulant _child_."

Hermione nodded, mostly to herself. If she could read his amount of defensiveness right, he had a bit of a crush.

"That's good to know," she told him. "Ask, then. Those things you've been wondering about."

"Have you ever slept with anyone but Ronald Weasley?" Snape asked, bluntly.

"No."

"Have you ever thought of sleeping with me before Monday?"

Hermione went deadly quiet.

"Go on, Granger. Let's hear the horrid truth. Was it too horrible to consider in any but the most dire circumstances, or was it something that crossed your mind because you'd been thinking it anyway?"

She turned red. She could deflect as well as he could, but the question annoyed her. Did he wonder if she was a nun at heart? Well, she was  _not_.

"I was  _merely_ _considering your question_ ," she said. "Did I picture it? Yes. Yes! I pictured half the men I know in bed, if even for half a second. You were the favorite teacher-fantasy in Hogwarts, you know? Especially for those who weren't in Potions after their OWLs.  _Tame Snape and make him less horrid_ , half said.  _Be ravished by someone who can do it all kinds of dirty_ , the other half said. Who were we to picture? Dumbledore? And don't get me wrong, some speculations happened in that department, too. Filch was mostly a joke. And Flitwick nobody hated enough to poke fun at. Hagrid is nice, but he doesn't  _scream_ sex, you know? And there was you. Right age, right bloody  _species,_ not that there weren't some crazy people sighing about Firenze. But _I_ never pictured it too much. I was always more of a my-own-age sort of girl, you know? And now, since I've been your apprentice, it crossed my mind a few times. I thought of you. I thought of Harry. I thought of Viktor Krum. I thought of a lot of people. But before you imagine anything  _lewd_ , I'd like to point out that I made those aphrodisiac potions for a reason. I don't masturbate with you in mind, Snape. I don't masturbate with anyone in mind. Instead, I wonder what other people do in bed. I wonder why they enjoy it. I wonder if any of a number of men might do anything _of interest_ to me in bed, however, and it occurred to me that you might take it as a... an... intellectual challenge to get to the... bottom of my non-enjoyment. In a sense, I did consider you - yet again, as a tool to my own advantage. Stop smirking."

Snape didn't seem to have any intention of stopping anything.

"So, Granger. You called me here. Surely, the apology could have been left off until tomorrow. Why am I here?"

She scoffed. So much for her oversharing back there - he'd obviously  _enjoyed it silently_ and decided to move on. Bastard.

"Because I want to take time off from work. I've spent two days thinking about where I've ended up, whom I've become. To put it simply, I'm a mess. My relationship is a mess. My life is a mess. The only thing I get right is work - and that's not alright. I'll crack sooner rather than later."

"And what do you want from _me_?"

"I'd like to work every day for the next month, then take two months off. And when I say  _every day_ , I mean including weekends. I have some money saved, but not enough to consider non-paid time off, not without a home."

"Without... a home?" Snape asked.

"I'll have to break up with Ron," Hermione said. "This isn't fair to either of us. He's a really decent man, but at this point, we're self-destructing. I  _could_ tell him we should take a break, but... It's not fair to keep someone hanging on to a thread of hope. We're not working out. We wouldn't be working out in a few months' time, either. All that's left is..."

"How to tell him," Snape finished her sentence. 

"How to tell him," she replied with a determined nod. "And then I'll move out. Stay in a hotel somewhere for a month. Take some vacation and see the world a bit. Then come back. Pick up from where I've left." She bit her lip. "I don't... want him to suffer."

"There's always suffering, Hermione," Snape said. "Whether it's before you end a relationship or when you end it. Nobody ends things because they've been going so well. Nobody is happy before, during and after a break up."

"I know that!" she replied, flustered. "It's not that. It's... I don't want him to feel like... like the world hates him. Or doesn't like him  _enough_. Sometimes I wish I could hold him forever and make sure he's loved. I want to give him everything and make sure that he knows how  _brilliant_ and  _caring_ and  _wonderful_ he is. And then, and then, and then..." 

"Are you about to cry?" Snape asked.

Hermione took a deep breath. She hadn't even noticed how agitated she was, but her heart was pounding at a million miles per hour.

"Maybe," she replied. "What's it to you? Aren't people allowed to cry? Anyway, the point is... the point is, I wish I could love him so much and in just the right way and it's tearing me apart that I can't. I just _can't_ , alright? I can't talk to him properly. We can't click right." She sniffed and realized she was crying, but she went on quickly, trying to ignore it. "We haven't been able to in so long. And it's just horrid. And it's unfair. And I tried to make it work, but it all comes out wrong. And same for him. And we just don't...  _work_. I wish we did, but guess what, we don't. I can't fix it. I don't know how to. I'm not sure it can be fixed. It's about all the things that _we_ are _not_. And I don't know how to say all that. You know? I just don't."

"You just did."

Snape whipped out his wand faster than lightning, while Hermione remained frozen, looking around. The last reply hadn't come from Snape.

"Ron?" she asked. She'd recognize his voice anywhere.

With a shiver of silver, Ron removed Harry's Invisibility Cloak and stood in front of them, eyes red and puffy, clearly having cried silently, just as she was right now. Snape slowly put his wand away once he realized there was no threat to them, then looked between the two of them with a face so unmoving it could be set in stone.

"You followed me," Hermione told her boyfriend.

"You've been lying to me," Ron said simply. "Going out. Staying late. Lying about being home when you weren't, when I'd checked. First, I thought you were cheating on me. Yesterday... yesterday you felt like you were saying goodbye. Can I sit with you?"

Hermione scooted over to allow him to sit.

"Harry gave you his cloak to spy on me?"

"I thought you were going to kill yourself," Ron said. "All the books on depression suggested people sometimes do stupid things. You seemed so depressed, then so resigned. I thought you were... done. So I followed you. But you're not done with life, are you? You're done with me."

Hermione didn't know what to say. Ron looked up at her and wiped at his red eyes.

"For all it's worth, I'm happy you weren't killing yourself," he said, then gave a hollow, loud, bitter laugh.

"Don't worry, Weasley," Snape said. "She was still doing stupid things, as I'm sure you've heard."

Hermione tried to kick him under the table and missed.

"I sure did," Ron said, laughing again between tears. "Oh, this is so funny. You're best friends now, are you? Wise Snape, the man she turns to for advice and understanding..."

"I'll go order you some coffee and water before you dehydrate, Weasley," Snape said, getting up and walking off.

"What, seriously?!" Ron asked. "Did he seriously say I'd dehydrate?!" 

"I think he meant to leave us alone to talk," Hermione said. To her, it seemed as if Snape'd panicked, but she wasn't about to betray him by saying that.

"He couldn't handle my bloody dramatic entrance."

They were quiet for a minute, neither knowing what to say. Hermione realized they were both crying, but trying not to. It made her feel closer to Ron - to this man whom she'd been with through thick and thin for years, whom she'd once considered one of her best friends, whom she  _loved_.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Ron leaned his head against the bench, closing his eyes.

"So am I, Hermione," he replied. "So am I."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was a long break between chapters - sorry about that. The title of this chapter is, of course, taken from David Bowie's "The man who sold the world". 
> 
> So much has happened since the last chapter. I got swarmed by projects at work. Somebody I knew died of the flu (the flu! In two thousand and fucking seventeen!) and, even though I didn't know her well, it left me panicky for a long time. The idea that a stupid disease like this can kill you out of fucking nowhere...
> 
> I got disenchanted with this fic. I got re-enchanted with this fic. 
> 
> I want to thank you all for reading. I sometimes want to go back to writing original stories, but over there I'd feel bad about not editing too much (and the feedback is... well, lacking), so I come here mostly to feel like something I write works and makes sense and is read. So thank you for reading, kudos-ing, commenting.


	10. A little black spot on the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys,
> 
> I know it's been forever. I kept writing and deleting this chapter and postponing it because of work and being tired and whatnot. I'm currently kind of depressed, but hey, at least I'm back.
> 
> I've managed to break my new pair of headphones, I'm not sure how. Which is sad. Let me tell you how sad it is. Because it's freaking sad.
> 
> So, I can't stand in-ear earphones. I just don't find them comfortable and most of them fall out of my ears or pressure them or whatever. My ears are just not made to have anything other than Q-tips inserted in them, and even those for a short period of them. So I used to have these clip-on sports headphones, you know? They were just awesome. But, alas, all good things come to an end and, after 2-3 years, mine started giving out.
> 
> I started looking for that model again, but it's no longer made. And, it turns out, you can't really find wired clip-on headphones with a microphone *anywhere* anymore. Apparently, I'm the only one who uses such things both for phone calls and for listening to music. So, after a lot of searching, I decided to go eccentric as hell and buy a huge pair of headphones. The sort which have a thing going over your head and are huuuuge over your ears. Those were the only type I could find which fit all my other desires. And they were beautiful, and they were Sennheiser and they had wonderful quality and they got annoying to wear eventually and they were uncomfortable around my neck, but the music was great.
> 
> I think I dropped them. I could've sworn I just dropped my phone, but hell, maybe I remember wrongly. Or maybe I hit them against something. I don't have a clue. I'm a bit careless sometimes. I'm hard on my tech. I know that. But the thing is this: I broke them. The jack bent. Maybe it's fixable. I threw out the bill because I'm stupid, I've never used a warranty before for headphones, so I just never...
> 
> Anyway, here's the sad part: I can buy a new pair. It's fine. But I already know they're not that comfortable to wear when I go for a walk, and I'm reminded of the fact that what I would like to buy doesn't exist, since the whole world has decided to jump on the in-ear wagon. There are some things that money can't buy - like, for example, the exact type of headphones you want.
> 
> And I'm writing this on the last day of a vacation that I kind of hated. The headphone thing is just the cherry on top of the cake (the cake contains dentists, doctors and paperwork).
> 
> So, anyways, I just wanted to rant in a place where very few RL people know me, because I already show up with my real name online in a couple of places and there I'm like oh so effing polite it hurts - otherwise backlash happens, mostly in the form of parents (my mum, my bloody mother-in-law) calling and complaining to no end. "OMG, SARSHI WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE ATTITUDE?!" And. I just. Can't.
> 
> Aaaanyways. Rant over. The song referenced in the title is "King of pain", by The Police.

On Friday, Hermione showed up in Snape's office the way she usually did, only to find him waiting for her without any intention of letting her into the lab.

"You should know your limits, apprentice," he told her. "Don't do anything dangerous when you can't focus."

"I'm fine," she replied. He threw her a disbelieving glance, and she lowered her eyes. "Maybe not."

"Come. Everything can wait."

They went to his home, and Hermione sat on the couch while he went to the kitchen to make tea. She kicked off her shoes and curled up, her head resting on her knees, wondering vaguely if his dislike about having his books touched extended to people putting their feet on his couch.

She felt like a child again, small and silly and stupid, lost in a world that seemed too big for her to handle. Hermione wondered how Snape could be attracted to her, when she was only slightly more mature than the kids he'd taught in school - then she wondered if he was actually a pervert, to like immature people such as herself.

He returned to the living room soon enough, carrying tea, and not even glaring at her for putting her socks on the couch.

"It was... horrible," she said, feeling like she owed him an update regarding Ron.

"A huge fight, then?"

"Nothing of the sort. In a sense, it was worse. We went home. We looked at the things we have. Decided he should keep the house, I should keep the books. I'm not surprised, really. The payments to Gringotts will be a bit high, but I figure he'll manage somehow. It's all done, now. It's over. I hate that it's done. Is it stupid? I wanted this, and now that I have it, I hate it. It's over and I never wanted a big fight, but now I wish we'd had one, so I could hate him."

"Can I make a suggestion?" Snape said.

"Sure."

"Don't stay at the Leaky Cauldron," he told her gently. "Tongues will wag."

Hermione looked up at him, not understanding - she knew that he  _liked_ her, of course, and he'd made it clear that he'd be willing to sleep with her (perhaps in the resting way, too), but she'd never expected him to invite her to stay over, even temporarily.

"Oh?" she said, uncertain how to react.  _Was_ it a good idea to stay at Snape's place, even on the couch? Even for a day? No. She'd have to refuse. Moving in with him... that way madness lie. 

"Go to your parents' home, or stay in a hotel. Do you have money?" he said, just as gently.

Hermione felt like an idiot. Of course he wasn't asking her to stay - she should have guessed that. Instead, she'd been dumb about it.

"Some," she said, hoping he'd misinterpret her disappointmen. She _would_ have refused, of course, but she'd have liked to be _asked_. Even if it would have been creepy.  _Bloody irrational_ , she told herself, but couldn't stop herself from feeling lonelier than before.

"Consider taking that vacation early. You need it."

"I don't have enough money for that," she said. "I don't want to stay in the cheapest motels."

"Take a wizarding tent."

"I've had enough of tents while we were on the run," Hermione said. "They remind me of Voldemort."

"Then stay in five-star hotels."

"Ha, bloody ha," she said. "I already told you, I'll save up, then go. Just because I'm not very rich and this idea will cost a lot of money doesn't mean you need to rub it in that I'm irresponsible."

"I meant that you should confound the muggles, Granger." Snape said, then chuckled. "You're good enough not to get caught."

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Wait, are you serious? I never would have thought of you as a dishonest individual."

"Really," he deadpanned. "You've always thought of me as a paragon of honesty. Somehow, I find that hard to believe."

"Even so, you were one of us, on Dumbledore's side in the war," she said. "You wouldn't confound muggles."

"On Dumbledore's side? Perhaps. But a light wizard? Never."

Hermione cocked her head, fascinated, about to ask if he was joking, but there was a tap on the window. She turned to see an owl holding a Howler.

"Oh, no," she said, standing up. "Oh, nononono..."

"How unpleasant," Snape remarked. "Weasley?"

"Not Ron," Hermione said. "He's not the Howler type. But  _a_ Weasley, probably. I'm sorry, I'll go get rid of it."

"Hmm."

He opened the window and the owl gave him the letter before flying off at top speed, probably knowing what would happen next.

"Brace yourself, Hermione," he told her, closing the window. "And let's get this over with."

"You could just destroy it," she said.

"But then we'll never know what was in it," he replied. "Nor whom you'll need to forgive and for what. It's best to be informed."

Before she could protest, he opened it.

" _HERMIONE, YOU CUNT!_ " the envelope screeched. 

"Ginny," Hermione groaned.

"HOW DARE YOU BREAK UP WITH MY BROTHER AFTER ALL THE SHIT YOU'VE PUT HIM TROUGH?! MONTHS AND MONTHS OF CRAP, RUNNING OFF FROM HOME, NEVER SAYING A WORD, AND HE BEARS IT HEROICALLY AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY HIM?! BY BREAKING HIS HEART!?-"

It went on and on, calling Hermione names (well,  _a_ name specifically: cunt) and listing everything Ron had ever done for her and all that Hermione had messed up herself. When the Howler self-destructed, Snape turned, looking mildly amused.

"I'm surprised she knows the word 'cunt'," he tutted. "Although, considering how often she used it, it's the only swear word she knows."

Hermione felt mortified.

"She's usually a nicer person..."

"And she'll regret this, no doubt," Snape replied. "Still, it's good to... is that... Weasley?!"

Hermione never found out what it was "good to", because she rushed to the window, expecting to see Ginny marching down on them with her wand drawn out. Instead, she saw Ron desperately trying to intercept an owl with another Howler. 

"What," she said. Then she opened the window, and cried out to him. "Ron?!"

He turned to look at her, and the owl tried to whoosh past him as if desperate to deliver the red envelope. Ron saw it from the corner of his eye and dived, ripping the Howler out of the bird's claws and instantly destroying it with a well-aimed spell.

"I'm so, so, so sorry, Hermione!" he cried, flushed from the effort and the embarrassment. "I mentioned today at lunch that we broke up, and Harry asked how, and then Ginny was there, and then she told mum, and I'm so, so, so sorry! I got to the Burrow and the letter was already sent!"

"The drama," Snape muttered next to her. Hermione glanced at him and she noticed the expression he used to have in school settle back on his features. "Oh, the dunderheads who think they can do anything and it will be  _alright_...."

"It's fine, Ron," Hermione said. 

"It is  _not_ fine!" Snape snapped. "Correspondence is one thing, but I will not have a Weasley invade my... Granger! Climbing out through the window is  _not_ a proper way of leaving the house!"

Hermione had just jumped down into the garden. She turned and rolled her eyes at him.

"I put my feet on the couch, too," she said. "Live a little, Severus! Don't be all proper!"

Ron gaped at her. Snape scowled.

"Don't you dare come back this way!" the older man cried, then slammed the window shut behind her.

"I'LL TAKE THE DOOR ON MY WAY BACK!" she cried, then turned back to Ron. "Hi. I... thanks for intercepting that Howler for me."

"That was  _awesome_ , Hermione," he said, staring at the window. "The  _look_ on his face."

Just like that, the years seemed to rewind. He was still a teenager, in love with her and thinking she was brilliant. She was still determined and huffy and basking in his admiration. For a second, she wanted to tell him they should get back together, give it another shot.

"I never would have dared do that in school," she said, unable to stop a grin from forming.

"I wouldn't dare do that  _now_."

"If we weren't friends, he'd probably hex me," she admitted. "Or worse."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence between them.

"Sometimes," Ron eventually said, "I feel like you're the most wonderful woman on earth." Hermione lowered her eyes. She wouldn't be able to handle it, if he said they should get back together. But, as it turned out, he didn't. "And at other times I'm lost. I kept thinking about it last night. And today. Sometimes I feel like I can't stand you, like you're trying to make things worse for me, for you, for us."

"I don't."

"I know. But I feel like that anyway. You can be difficult." He took a deep breath. "Not that I'm trying to insult you. It's alright to be a pain sometimes."

"Could you stop that?" Hermione scoffed. "You're digging yourself in deeper."

"Right. Err. Hermione. I think... we shouldn't see each other for a while. Not as in not date. I mean, let's avoid each other for a time. For a long time, perhaps. I'm not sure how long. The thing is... there's too much tension between us. I can't look at you without feeling... exasperated, most of the time. It's gone so bad."

"I remember breaking up with you, do you remember that, too?" she asked. "Because I didn't ask for a break, or some time off to think."

"I know, I know," he said, waving his arms and looking as if he were desperate to get things right. Hermione decided to give him a break and wait until he got to the point. The way things were going, she wouldn't be listening to him again for who knew how long. "But... Hermione?"

"Yes?"

Ron sighed, clearly working up the courage to say whatever there was on his mind.

"After a long time has passed. After we let it go. And letting it go is a great idea, by the way. It is. I can see that. I think I've seen it since before you came here as an apprentice, but I didn't want to admit it. But. Even if we broke up. Hermione. If you could... do you think we could... will you... be my friend again?"

She stood for a second in shock.

"We've known each other for so long," he said. "And we understand each other, except we clash in all the wrong places. But maybe, if we don't try to date, maybe... maybe it'll be alright. I miss having my friend Hermione, who was brilliant and clever."

A smile broke on her face as he talked.

"We really _were_ good friends, weren't we?" she said. "I'd like that. Giving friendship another try. When we can."

He hugged her suddenly and tightly, making her squeak.

"Then..." he said. "Then, until the next time. Later. I'll try to keep my family off you. Harry'll help, I'm sure. Go and... just be well."

He let her go and stepped back and disapparated, not saying goodbye. Hermione smiled behind him, feeling teary, then walked up to Snape's house and let herself inside. Her old professor was leaning against the wall next to the window, his face completely blank.

"I'm sorry I climbed out through there," she said, feeling a wave of guilt. "I don't think I'll do it again. Especially if you tell me it's as bad as touching your books."

He looked at her then with a cold rage she hadn't seen in years. She froze.

"All back together with Weasley now, are we?" he sneered.

"Ron and I were just..."

"You _stupid_ woman. Perhaps you think he'll treat you better now? You'll be a better match, no doubt, now that the Gryffindor hero swooped in to save you from a Howler, all _dashing_  and _brave_. Oh, how the flames of your love will be fanned, how they'll  _burn_ , how you'll have the time of your life..."

Hermione felt tempted to slap him, but though better about it. She'd promised she would never hit him again.

"Is that what you think happened out there?" she hissed. "You think we're back together. You think I'm stupid."

"Am I wrong, Granger? He came back and stole your heart away."

"Either that," she snapped. "Or he wished me good _bloody_ life and told me maybe we could be  _friends_ again some day. You bloody _prejudiced_ , anti- _Gryffindor_ bat of a  _Slytherin._ Oh, wait, he  _did_ do the latter, but why on earth should you ask  _me_ what went on, when you can just stare from behind your window like a  _creep_ , making scenarios in your head. Emotional maturity," she went on, seeing him look as if he were slapped. " _Sometimes_ , he has it. Sometimes, _I_ have it, too."

Before she could even finish speaking, Snape crossed the room and kissed her.


End file.
